February 17 – 23, 2018
News
Comment
Comment
Omar Sakr
Representation and diversity
“As a marginalised poet beginning to have some small measure of success, I’m not supposed to talk about this. I am supposed to take what is given, speak as wound, as tragic past come good, and if I should succeed, treat it as the accidental byproduct of a system that took pity on me, never something I had a hand in making.”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
Joyce ruins Turnbull’s turnaround
“It will take quite some work to restore credibility to the Nationals as the “family values” party. If the party room sticks by Joyce, they are endorsing his hypocrisy – nowhere more on show than in his support of the “No” case on marriage equality. He spoke at an Australian Christian Lobby rally about the need to give children the stability of a committed, heterosexual relationship.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Christopher Hitchens: The lost interview
Writer Christopher Hitchens first met Peter Wilmoth in 1989, covering the Romanian revolution. In 2010, two weeks before Hitchens was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, the pair caught up for lunch in Sydney. Hitchens died 18 months later, and the tape of that conversation was missing until now. “I know I get very oppressed by the way that every day is more and more subtracted out of less and less.”
Film
‘Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool’
As a fading diva in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, Annette Bening reminds the reviewer of why he fell in love with film in the first place.
Portrait
My grandmother’s death
“As a child, my grandmother played tennis, ate kangaroo tail soup and drove a pony and sulky. As a young woman, she imported fine English china and Venetian glass. She was one of the few female automobile drivers in the 1930s, and still drove in her 80s, transporting ‘the old people’ and delivering Meals on Wheels.”
Books
Life
Travel
Phú Quoc, Vietnam
Vietnam’s efforts to attract tourists to its rapidly multiplying resorts on Phú Quoc, in the Gulf of Thailand, risk making the island a victim of its own success.
The Quiz
Quotes
EMPLOYMENT
“Ms Campion was the only person interviewed for the role because she had the skills and experience and she was well known, of course.”
The minister for resources and northern Australia explains why Barnaby Joyce’s partner was chosen to work in his office. The senator was more convincing when he was just blaming his mum for stuff.
CRIME
“It’s definitely not good for business.”
The owner of a Rockdale physiotherapy clinic in front of which former Comanchero bikie chief Mahmoud “Mick” Hawi was murdered reflects on the incident. Hawi was shot at least six times.
MUSIC
“I honestly think he may have a brain tumour. He’s always been insufferable.”
The Smashing Pumpkins bassist reflects on frontman Billy Corgan ahead of a reunion tour. She’s not a neurologist, but she’s not wrong either.
CORRUPTION
“The NSW ICAC is much better at destroying people’s lives than it is at uncovering real criminality.”
The former prime minister resists calls for a federal anti-corruption body. If you can’t corruptly influence mining leases and family business opportunities, what’s left to live for?
ABUSE
“The president along with the entire administration take domestic violence very seriously.”
The White House press secretary defends Trump aide Rob Porter. According to two former wives, Porter takes domestic violence particularly seriously.
GUNS
“He got expelled for disciplinary reasons, I don’t know the specifics.”
The Broward County sheriff identifies the gunman in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, the 18th US school shooting this year. At least 17 people were killed.
