November 21 – 27, 2020
News
Comment
Comment
James Boyce
Colonisation and disease
“As a remarkable year nears its end, it seems a once-in-a-century opportunity to reflect on the most traumatic event in modern Australian history has been squandered. In 2020, Australians have become more conversant with the ravages of the Spanish flu and the mediaeval plague. But not even Covid-19 could induce public reflection on the pathogens that killed so many Indigenous Australians after the colonisation of this land.”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
Robo-debt: a government-sanctioned debt sentence
“An inconvenient truth rocked the Morrison government this week when it was finally brought to some account over the long-running robo-debt scandal … Don’t imagine the architect of the scheme, the prime minister himself, doesn’t realise how big a disaster this is. Scott Morrison went to great lengths to create a diversion, knowing the robo-debt story would break this week.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Drill rapper Snoee Badman
Snoee Badman – the first Australian to release an EP from inside a maximum-security prison – embodies a punk defiance to institutional brutality. “I have a lot of violence to write about. Jail is not good for anyone … Prison gives you a lot of hatred.”
Theatre
Wicked Sisters
Returning to the stage after almost two decades, Alma De Groen’s Wicked Sisters now reads like a study of the generational failures of white feminism.
Fiction
Brazen stats of empire
“I am a dressmaker who does alterations to make a living. You might call me a tailor, but what would you know? How long would you spend down here in the heat, working 12-hour shifts? And this is better than when I worked in the shop with 30 others doing the same thing – making shirts where if one sleeve was slightly shorter than another, it made no difference. It’s impossible to plumb the depths of cultural and familial exploitation in this, to work around your presumptions, your impositions, your faux guilts and apologies. You read me as you choose to read me within the matrix of your expectations, the stereotypes of avoidance. And even the word ‘stereotype’ becomes a trigger, a way through the labyrinth of concerns.”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
Policy
“This should read Socialist Victorian Government spends $5.3 billion to entrench inequality.”
The Liberal MP offers his take on the Andrews government’s announcement it will build 12,000 new units of public housing. The Coalition prefers entrenching inequality through means that end up costing only $1.2 billion in an out-of-court settlement.
Trade
“China needs us just as much as we need China, as far as trade is concerned.”
The acting prime minister offers a blindly optimistic view of Australia’s place in the world and somehow makes the country long for Scott Morrison’s return.
Afghanistan
“He has put his medals up as collateral on a loan and will relinquish them if required.”
The Seven chairman outlines the deal behind his offer to cover former SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith’s legal costs. A roundabout way for Stokes to add to his Victoria Cross collection but dealer’s choice.
IGADF
“The show trial of Australia’s elite Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) will mar the decades of valiant service these countless personnel have given.”
The One Nation leader responds to a four-year investigation that alleges Australian soldiers were involved in the murder of 39 Afghan civilians. Shortly, the party will launch its new slogan: “We’ve got the guts to defend war criminals.”
Climate
“We do not deny climate change, we are not deniers.”
The News Corp tycoon addresses his son James’s departure from the company’s board. When deniers deny being deniers because they are in denial about the consequences of their denial, we truly have entered the Anthropocene.
1984
“I think a lot of the guidelines you’re seeing are Orwellian.”
The White House press secretary derides gathering limits put in place by some US states for Thanksgiving. Not even Orwell could have dreamed up police using tear gas to disband peaceful protesters so the president could have a photo-op holding a Bible in front of a church.
