May 9 – 15, 2020
News
Comment
Comment
Mathew Trinca
Sharing our lockdown experiences
“The response was clear and immediate. Within minutes of launching the National Museum of Australia’s project to record our collective experiences of the coronavirus, scores of people across the country joined in to share how they were coping with the crisis. ‘I’ve been waiting for something like this to start,’ one woman wrote in our Facebook group that first day.”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
An economy on life support
“It’s been a long six weeks since Australia’s governments first imposed economy-crushing lockdowns to flatten the coronavirus curve. Scott Morrison has no doubt the pain has been worth it, saying ‘thousands of Australian lives have been saved’. Now he’s leading the charge to get back to business as soon as possible. He adds the qualification ‘safely possible’ but he is taking a huge gamble, risking a relapse that could only lead to a deeper recession.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Booker Prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo
Anglo–Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo wrote seven books before her Booker Prize-winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other, catapulted her into the limelight. “I have done the work for people to now engage with it. It’s just the most incredible thing, because at my age – I’m 60 – to suddenly become an overnight success, is very exciting. It’s also a real moment of hope for people who have been writing for a long time and haven’t received the kind of attention they’d like to get. And also, for Black women, and Black British people.”
Fiction
Waiting
“A waiting room. It’s mid-afternoon, a Monday, and the chairs are hard blue plastic. Mostly young women today, red-eyed babies on their knees, all busy rustling through their handbags for plastic containers of sultanas or carrot sticks. The babies have the expressions of goldfish, their lips pursed and cheeks bulgy, their eyes wide open and blinking dumbly. A woman sweeps through from the surgery, her child’s bare limbs dangling from her arm. Let me wrap her, the man behind her says. I just want to get her in the car, she snaps back. The patient feels dizzy again, and closes her eyes. She made it here, at least.”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
POLITICS
“I mean, I woke up this morning and said, ‘Bugger this for a joke.’ ”
The New South Wales Transport minister pulls out of the race for Eden-Monaro after a rival called him a cunt. He said he couldn’t take five weeks of slurs like that, which makes you wonder what he’s been doing in politics for 17 years.
MEDIA
“The story was wrong. Mr Johns was not leaving the brothel.”
The Murdoch tabloids apologise for a front page that claimed musician Daniel Johns had been on a bender at a Sydney bondage club. Even if it were true, the story should never have run.
JOBS
“By increasing their Newstart allowances there’s no incentive to go out and find work.”
The One Nation leader criticises the government’s welfare package. There are clearly as many jobs out there as there are men falsely accused of domestic violence.
CHINA
“Two Western governments contributed to it, but I will not reveal my sources.”
The Daily Telegraph reporter defends a piece pushing the theory that coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab. It contradicts government intelligence, but it is a good reason to invade Iraq.
ECONOMICS
“As has been remarked, unemployment went up in the elevator, and went down by the stairs.”
The treasurer uses the 1990s recession to explain his plans to get people back into work. The new question is how many sick people are on the stairs.
CELEBRITY
“I am recovering from surgery and barely alive so may my typos b forgiven but, damnit.”
The musician responds to Elon Musk on Twitter, where he was correcting her explanation of their baby’s name. You might say this is what happens when you call your child X Æ A-12, but actually it’s what happens when you reproduce with Elon Musk.
