July 4 – 10, 2020
News
Comment
Comment
Open letter
Relocate the Captain Cook statue
“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.”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
Test for PM in Eden-Monaro
“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.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Actor Toby Schmitz’s live wire
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.”
Fiction
Birthday pony
“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. ”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
RHETORIC
“That period of the 1930s has been something I have been revisiting.”
The prime minister invokes the rise of Nazi Germany to justify spending billions of dollars on missiles. He really could have just gone with “jobs and growth”.
MARKETING
“Woolworths failed to act even after the ACMA had warned it of potential compliance issues.”
The Australian Communications and Media Authority chair announces a $1 million fine for the supermarket over millions of spam emails. It’s unclear what’s more surprising: the size of the fine, or the fact thousands of people were able to work out how to unsubscribe from a marketing email.
PANDEMIC
“You would have to have been on Mars not to understand that the chief health officer’s restrictions apply in these 36 suburbs.”
Victoria’s top cop rejects suggestions language barriers may be hampering compliance with Covid-19 health information, contradicting the chief health officer who days earlier said the state had failed to engage with linguistically diverse communities.
MODERNITY
“This is not a wowser approach. This is based on real problems we’ve seen around the world.”
The South Australian Health minister defends state law that makes nightclub patrons choose between drinking or dancing. Nothing says cutting-edge policy quite like the term “wowser”.
COURTS
“While we respect the findings of the Full Court the Rush case exposes the inadequacies of Australia’s defamation laws.”
The Daily Telegraph editor responds to the Federal Court rejection of his paper’s appeal against Geoffrey Rush’s successful defamation proceedings. The actor will receive $2.9 million in damages.
FRONT LINE
“Five minutes.”
A guard who worked at one of the Melbourne hotels linked to the city’s latest Covid-19 outbreak tells Today how much training he was given before looking after quarantined guests. A clear failure, although still more training than most security guards have.
