October 20 – 26, 2018
News
Comment
Comment
Ruby Hamad
Razing the white flag
“Perhaps they are afraid that one day it will finally dawn on us that to be “white” does not denote an inherited ethnicity but an acquired power. That if we were to untangle being white from being English or Australian or Canadian or European, then we will see whiteness for what it is: not something you intrinsically are, but something to which you are granted access. That whiteness exists only because systemic institutionalised racism exists, and to dismantle racism by definition entails dismantling whiteness. White people are bound not by a shared culture or skin colour but by power.”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
Judgement day cometh in Wentworth
“The previous time a byelection was held to replace a prime minister dumped by his own party, the government lost the seat. It was 26 years ago, when Bob Hawke’s seat of Wills fell to the independent Phil Cleary. The Morrison government is giving every impression it fears the same is about to happen in Saturday’s Wentworth byelection. This is in itself remarkable, although the Wills precedent is pertinent. Labor had never lost the seat before its 1992 byelection defeat. Wentworth has been a non-Labor stronghold for 70 years and has close to an 18 per cent margin – twice what Labor had in Wills. But the stakes are infinitely higher this time.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Caroline O’Connor’s high notes
She’s played everyone from Velma Kelly in Chicago to Judy Garland in The Boy from Oz, flawlessly channelling the great Piaf and Merman along the way. Now Caroline O’Connor takes the stage in her one-woman show, From Broadway with Love. For one night only, she’s looking forward to airing a repertoire of songs she knows as intimately as old friends. “I’m in love with this material; that’s why I’m doing it,” she says. “I’m just going to relax and enjoy the occasion.”
Music
Empress Of and Oh Pep!
The second albums of Empress Of and Oh Pep! see the acts moving from electronica and alt-folk respectively into poppier territory, and making good use of collaborators to assist the transition.
Portrait
Monica the Tantanoola bartender
“There’s a tiger in Tantanoola, South Australia, at least that’s what the tourist signs on the highway say. They are compelling and I am sure I am not the first wanderer to follow the signs in an attempt to discover what the tiger is. They lead to a small town, a few streets of houses, a post office barely visible from where I am parked and a low pub of rendered painted stone. Atop its gable roof is a cutout of the legendary creature stalking dangerously. I step into a well-lit front bar, sit down, order a cider and strike up a conversation with Monica, one of the three women behind the bar. She was the first person I noticed when I entered the place. The only man who works here is the chef, and you see him only when he sticks his head slightly comically out through the service hatch.”
Books
Life
The Quiz
Quotes
DIPLOMACY
“I don’t recall the complete conversation.”
The environment minister apologises for telling the former Kiribati president that “for the Pacific it’s always about the cash”. Let he who has not crossed a Canberra restaurant to insult a Nobel Prize nominee cast the first stone.
SENATE
“The Government Senators’ actions in the Senate this afternoon confirm that the Government deplores racism of any kind.”
The attorney-general tweets in support of the government backing a motion from Pauline Hanson that “it’s okay to be white”. Presumably, the senator means any kind of racism, except the kind where you vote in favour of a neo-Nazi slogan.
LITIGATION
“There was no justification ... to trigger that termination clause.”
The ex-ABC managing director sues her former employer over “adverse action”. She made this claim before it became clear she lost the SeaChange remake to Channel Nine.
QUEENSLAND
“It’s taken a century to get to this point.”
The Queensland premier celebrates a landmark vote decriminalising abortion. By “this point” she means the late 1960s.
JOURNALISM
“I think there is a cancer in Canberra at the moment – it is people who background journalists.”
The deputy prime minister and Nationals leader rejects reports his party is rallying against him. Of all the cancers in parliament, that one is a light sunburn.
REFLECTION
“Absolutely not.”
The United States presidential runner-up denies her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was an abuse of power as they were both adults. Asked why so many female voters were ambivalent about her run for the White House, Clinton said she had, quote, “no idea”.
