April 29 – May 5, 2023
News
Comment
Comment
Danielle Wood
Albanese’s three biggest budget challenges
“As the May budget draws closer its outlines are becoming clearer. It looks like it will embrace the incremental ‘don’t scare the horses’ approach that has so far defined Labor’s first year in office. Revenue gains will be largely banked, but otherwise efforts at budget consolidation will be modest.”
Comment
Chris Wallace
Maybe Peter Dutton’s just not that smart
“In any other context, the Albanese government could have expected to be wedged between national security and social security this week – with a debate on spending priorities and its willingness to do so much in one area and so little in another.”
Comment
John Hewson
The RBA’s 51 steps
“The public’s expectations for the review of the Reserve Bank were high. Some hoped it would mean an end to crippling interest rate rises. Others saw the prospect of staff and board members being held accountable for the false and misleading forward guidance that had suggested interest rates would remain around historic lows until 2024.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Artist Yuki Kihara
Yuki Kihara is a fa‘afafine artist whose work investigates and reinterprets colonial fantasies of the Pacific – opening the door for others to do the same.
The Influence
Ben Cobham
New York artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s radical imaginings of space and light showed designer Ben Cobham how to reveal what is often unnoticed or discarded.
Fiction
Swimming without breath
“A little way along, finding beach showers, she drinks deeply from the small coppery faucet. Ella’s father says you can learn to love yourself just as much as you hate yourself. That the line is very fine, that you just have to click and practise. She is trying. She thinks then of leaving town and walking home, and sets off shoeless and hatless in the melting sun.”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
Media
“Retirement is going great so far.”
The former Fox News host speaks to press outside his house in Florida. He is said to have been shocked by his sacking, which seems surprising from someone who goes on and on about the great replacement.
Politics
“I am the führer. I’m the king who takes the decisions.”
The former British prime minister is quoted in a new book by colleague Michael Gove. Say what you will about Hitler, at least he combed his hair.
Housing
“His understanding of economics is basically terrible.”
The broadcaster mocks Adam Bandt’s suggestion for a rent freeze. If you want to really understand economics and rental stress, it helps to be born to a Liberal Party treasurer and go to a grammar school in Kew.
Immigration
“It is a mess ... so complicated that if I drew you a diagram it would look like a tangled bowl of spaghetti.”
The Home Affairs minister announces a major overhaul of the migration system. It is wild how much Australians can’t talk about multiculturalism without talking about food.
Crime
“I am not Nicholas Alahverdian. I do not know how to make this clearer.”
An American man who faked his own death to avoid sexual assault charges is found living in Scotland. He now speaks with an inexplicable British accent and dresses more or less like Mole from The Wind in the Willows.
Deaths
“A great wit, satirist, writer and an absolute one-of-kind, he was both gifted and a gift.”
The prime minister notes the death of Barry Humphries, aged 89. The Saturday Paper would have commissioned an obituary but everyone we went to was already doing six pieces for The Australian.
