November 19 – 25, 2022
News
Comment
Comment
Thom Woodroofe
What it’s like to negotiate a climate agreement
“The latest COP27 is the first United Nations climate gathering in nearly five years from which Australia hasn’t emerged as a diminished global power. In recent years, it has become par for the course that such gatherings result in stories of Australia siding with the likes of Russia and Saudi Arabia to block progress.”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
The Xi Jinping handshake
“Anthony Albanese’s handshake with Xi Jinping was more than a reset in relations between Australia and China; it was confirmation that the dynamics of domestic politics here have changed. The spectre of the ‘yellow peril’, particularly dog-whistled over the past three years, has lost its potency.”
Comment
John Hewson
We can afford to fight poverty
“As the fourth-richest country in the world – on average – we should all be more concerned about a recent study showing that more than one in eight people live below the poverty line in Australia. The ACOSS/UNSW Sydney data counted as many as 3.3 million, including 760,000 children, living in poverty in 2019-20, as the pandemic began.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
The Influence
Glenn Shea
For First Nations theatre-maker Glenn Shea, the comedy series Basically Black remains as fresh and radical as when it premiered in 1973.
Fiction
The Angel of Fitzroy
“Aldo’s wings began to sprout when he was two years old. They pushed through the skin, little feathered extensions of his shoulder blades. His parents, Ralph and Rhonda, bound him tightly with bandages that held the fledgling wings tucked against his back. He found it hard to breathe as he played during the day but at night he was unwrapped. He stood in the middle of his bedroom and moved his shoulders up and down to flap his wings, but he remained anchored to the floor.”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
Courts
“There is no evidence of remorse, as the offender maintains his innocence.”
The judge sentences Guy Sebastian’s former manager, Titus Day, to prison for embezzling more than $600,000 of the singer’s earnings. That might be so, but it was still Shannon Noll who was actually robbed.
Politics
“This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family.”
The former president’s daughter explains in a press release why she won’t be joining Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. It could also be that her father is a talking Madame Tussauds exhibit.
Integrity
“When I’m asked for information, I provide every bit of it.”
The Victorian opposition leader denies attempting to stall investigations into Liberal Party donations, one of which has been referred to the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission. If he does become premier, at least he won’t need a briefing on how the state’s anti-corruption body works.
Technology
“Going forward … we will need to be extremely hardcore.”
The entrepreneur tells the Twitter staff he hasn’t sacked that they need to agree to “working long hours at high intensity” or resign. Musk is the human definition of a character limit.
Police
“I’ve been banned from all police stations.”
The police officer who shot Kumanjayi Walker refuses to answer most questions at the inquest into the killing. He was presenting the ban from police stations as a bad thing.
Diplomacy
“That is not appropriate, and we didn’t do it that way.”
The Chinese leader rebukes Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for leaking details of their closed-door meeting. Trudeau maintains it doesn’t count as a leak to the media unless it involves footage of him in blackface.
