May 4 – 10, 2019 | The Saturday Paper

News

What Clive Palmer wants for his $60m

“Palmer’s narrow goal is to ensure a right-wing government that will protect the fossil fuel industry, particularly the interests of coalminers in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.”

Mike Seccombe Despite Clive Palmer’s outlandish claims of his party forming government, the United Australia Party leader has a canny election strategy: to benefit his mining interests.

News

Medical treatment denied to Nauru politicians

“While the number of refugees decreases in Nauru, a wildly destabilising legacy remains for its people. It is a legacy shared by both major Australian parties, regardless of who wins on May 18.”

Martin McKenzie-Murray As it becomes clear that Australia has helped establish an authoritarian regime on Nauru, government opponents are being denied medical care.

News

Big-dollar pledges for marginal seats

Karen Middleton Wherever there’s a marginal seat, there’s a politician from the Coalition or Labor pledging millions of dollars.

News

ParentsNext program not helping single and sole mothers

Clementine Ford The compulsory ParentsNext program aims to help disadvantaged parents find work. Instead, it has led to financial instability for many participants, who struggle to meet the scheme’s requirements.

News

Political engagement on WeChat

“The participants in these live WeChat sessions are some of the Mandarin-speaking community’s more politically engaged individuals. From both Labor and Coalition camps, new opinion leaders are emerging to play an active role. ”

Wanning Sun As election day approaches, both Labor and the Coalition have taken to the social media platform WeChat to appeal to Chinese-Australian voters – even if it might lead to scrutiny by the Chinese government.

World

Modi re-election likely in Indian elections

Jonathan Pearlman India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is expected to win a second term in this month’s Indian elections, although Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party may be gaining ground.

Comment

David Ritter
Australians want leadership on climate

“Where once ‘the environment’ was just one political issue among many, years of inaction have brought on a state of paramount urgency. As David Attenborough put it recently, ‘If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.’ Change is coming. Every election is now a climate change election.”

Comment

Paul Bongiorno
Nowhere for Scott Morrison to hide

“How much easier would life be for Scott Morrison if he was a Liberal prime minister seeking his third term in government? He could point to the delivery of an agenda outlined back in 2013 and his leadership of a united, cohesive team of senior ministers who have mostly delivered and become household names. Sadly, for Morrison, that is not his reality, and it is showing. He dare not mention the war.”

Diary

Gadfly
Candidates with destiny

Richard Ackland The election campaign is in full stride and citizens at long last are getting their money’s worth. Scenes of Pauline in tears over Steve Dickson’s derailment of her plans to turn Australia into a bogan paradise were particularly endearing. This was a terrific performance of a grievance peddler playing the victim. Unfortunately, it’s the distressing but inevitable fallout of her party’s preselection processes, which are carefully designed to get drongos running for parliament.

Letters, Poem & Editorial

Poem

Maxine Beneba Clarke
Proximity

they are the women

whose bodies

don’t quite make front page

they are carefully measured outrage

when it happened

Editorial
Our cost to bear

There is a nuanced debate playing out over Brian Fisher’s analysis of the cost of Labor’s climate policy. In the corner of Twitter where economists and climate pundits squabble, opinions fly back and forth – on cost curves, on the assumptions of Fisher’s model and even on his professional standing in the field. What is likely to stick with voters, though, are the numbers pulled from Fisher’s report, published on the front pages of papers around the country.

Letters

Conflicts of interest

Mick Keelty’s warning, via Karen Middleton, that the nation’s public water supplies were “ripe for corruption” has come too late (“Keelty warns river ‘ripe for corruption’ ”, …

Medivac hopes unfulfilled

Each week I welcome and treasure reading The Saturday Paper with its longer factual and analytical style, even though it may disturb me. I was particularly despairing after reading Behrouz Boochani’s …

Culture

Singer-songwriter Aldous Harding in her music video for "Fixture Picture".

Profile

Finding poetry in emotion with Aldous Harding

Marieke Hardy On her magical new album, Designer, Aldous Harding’s songs remain intensely personal. But she wants her listeners to make their own meaning of her music. “I can never listen to my work the way other people can, and if that’s what it makes them think of – if that’s what it draws up for them – then who am I to say that it’s not? Because I have no idea what it’s like to listen to my work. It doesn’t affect me in a positive or a negative way.”

Theatre

Bell Shakespeare’s The Miser

Alison Croggon

With an energetic cast and Peter Evans’ strong direction, Bell Shakespeare’s production of The Miser proves that Molière’s satire is still right on the money.

Portrait

Vale poet Les Murray

“That was Les – always himself. A natural, a maverick, a rare fluke in a baggy wool jumper who was as original in his life as in his work.”

Peter Goldsworthy

Television

The OA

Sanja Grozdanic

In the second season of Netflix’s series The OA, its creators question the relentless technological progress of our time, but the result is somewhat scattered.

Books

Image for article: Daughter of Bad Times

Rohan Wilson
Daughter of Bad Times

Image for article: Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

Andrea Lawlor
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

Image for article: The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela

Sisonke Msimang
The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela

Life

Food

Celeriac chawanmushi

David Moyle

Life

Private grief and public memorials

Sally Piper Where once grief was kept under wraps, it now seeps into the collective consciousness via social media and public memorials. But what are the consequences of this new openness?

Sport

Soccer duo’s World Cup dream

Robert Kidd As firm friends playing soccer in Spain’s women’s league, Australians Aivi Luik and Alex Chidiac both have a higher honour in their sights – a spot in the Matildas’ World Cup squad.

Puzzles

The Cryptic

$link to this week\'s crossword$

Crossword No. 251

The Quiz

1. In motoring terms, what does rpm stand for?

2. Which American journalist and author published a collection of essays in 1979 titled The White Album?

3. Which two countries have an ‘x’ in their name?

4. Traditionally, a pearl wedding anniversary celebrates how many years of marriage?

5. Paul Scurrah is CEO and managing director of which company?

6. Who plays mother Holly Burns in the film Ben Is Back?

7. Where in the human body is the buccal cavity?

8. What is Europe’s most active volcano? (Bonus point for naming the island it is located on.)

9. Which NRL player officially announced his immediate retirement from the game on April 15?

10. Cohiba, Romeo y Julieta and Montecristo are all brands of what?

Click through for answers.

Quotes

THINKING

“I think we contract out too much to the experts already.”

Tony AbbottThe former prime minister speaks out against expertise. It’s why the two jobs he’s had are journalist and politician.

TRUTH

“Let’s face it: I’m a bad person. I’m a bad person. Who cares about me?”

Clive PalmerThe campaign hopeful offers an assessment of his own character. Unfortunately, his honesty did carry elsewhere in the interview.

RACE

“It was a very brief meeting from what I saw, two to three minutes.”

Ian GoodenoughThe Liberal MP says he and Andrew Hastie met with convicted extremist Neil Erikson at a white farmers’ rally in Perth. Hastie denies it and Goodenough later clarified it was just a guy “who was dressed like a rapper”.

CAMPAIGNING

“At least you paid. ScoMo didn’t pay.”

BartenderA man pouring beers at Agfest in Tasmania thanks Bill Shorten for fixing his tab. Scott Morrison will pay on May 18, probably.

SPORT

“There seems to be a misunderstanding about my post from last night, I am not gay.”

James FaulknerThe Australian cricketer clarifies reporting on his sexuality after sharing a picture of a birthday dinner with his mother and his housemate, who he described as his “boyfriend”. It’s a shame: he seemed cute.

LAW

“It was de rigueur for most of those guys like Roman who had grown up with the European sensibility.”

Anjelica HustonThe Oscar-winner defends Roman Polanski over child molestation, and extends her defence to Woody Allen and Jeffrey Tambor. This is a person with the professional capacity to at least “act” as if they have a soul.