October 10 – 16, 2020
News
Comment
Comment
Richard Denniss
After the virus: Debt warranted
“This week’s budget marks a remarkable turning point in Australia’s economic and political debate. Fears of budget deficits and public debt have been replaced by fears of pandemic and mass unemployment. And I’m not talking about a skittish public – these are the fears of Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg. Theirs has been a productive fear – one that’s shaken policy free from conservative tunnel vision and stripped the sheen off dogged neoliberalism, particularly for voters.”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
Furiously digging a deeper hole in the budget
“The hole could surely be seen from Mars: a deficit of $213.7 billion this financial year and projected to fall to $66.9 billion in 2023-24, still massively in the red by previous Australian standards … The sheer size of the numbers suggests to seasoned observers that the government only half believes in the ‘hope’ the treasurer spoke of in his speech – hope that recovery is under way and that ‘Australia is up to the task’.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Children’s author Ted Prior
Four years ago, children’s author Ted Prior thought he had finished with his beloved character Grug. But with a new book and a theatre adaptation celebrating its 10th anniversary, it seems that he is far from done.
Theatre
Wonnangatta
The poetic vernacular of Angus Cerini’s Wonnangatta brings a dark comedy to its violent story.
Fiction
Three anecdotes
“A Management Consultant, after a meeting in Canberra that had got him absolutely nowhere, was apparently flying back into Melbourne when, as the plane banked and came in low over a newly ploughed paddock on the northern outskirts of the city, he saw a man down there standing, as he later said, alone and forlorn. This image so affected the Management Consultant that after disembarking at the airport he immediately hired a taxi and asked the driver could he take him out there (he’d got his bearings from a row of pylons, a train line and a nearby dam). But the driver had no sooner pulled up where his passenger asked on a lonely stretch of road near Lancefield when he, the taxi driver, went strangely silent.”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
Pets
“They’re going to call it ‘Lodge Ladies’ and name some of their chicks after former PM’s wives who lived at The Lodge.”
The Morrison family gets chickens. The rooster lobby has asked that the prime minister stop “politicising gender” by deliberately excluding them from the scheme.
TikTok
“You lied about your fucking mother? About Covid?”
The former senior adviser to Donald Trump reproaches her daughter, Claudia, who was live streaming their argument on the app TikTok. Conway has, of course, never lied, particularly about coronavirus.
Education
“An excellent outcome for South Australia.”
The Centre Alliance senator backs the government’s controversial university reforms. The state’s universities will be classified as “regional” under the deal, with Adelaide being renamed the “Little Town of Churches”.
America
“Hi, perhaps you recognise me. It’s your favourite president.”
The US president shares a video on Twitter after his release from hospital for Covid-19; 51.4 per cent of people watching did not recognise him as their favourite president.
Covid-19
“It’s incredibly selfish of older people or neurotic people who are timid and afraid and won’t come out of their basements.”
The News Corp columnist blames the elderly and timid for the impact of Covid-19. Devine has a long history of defending young people, like the time she falsely accused Indigenous nine-year-old Quaden Bayles of faking being bullied.
Equality
“Women occupy a similar high-end platform in areas of publishing, advertising, fashion, beauty and modelling.”
The company, which seeks to rope off a section of Bondi Beach for its members, outlines its ideal clientele. Male members, the beach club’s proposal says, will likely be “doctors, surgeons, members of the finance industry”.
