October 30 – November 5, 2021
News
Comment
Comment
Peter Doherty
What we’ve learnt about Covid-19 and ‘booster’ vaccines
“Focusing on the disease, what has been the nature of the journey so far? Once the SARS-CoV-2 gene sequence was released on January 15, 2020, innovators in Britain, Europe and the United States started immediately to make the vaccines that, within months, were in clinical trials and, at least in the northern hemisphere, going into the arms of large numbers of people by the beginning of 2021.”
Comment
John Hewson
I grew up as one of Pru Goward’s ‘proles’ and her views are deplorable
“How often have you heard that we are a very egalitarian nation, and heard politicians claim that we have one of the most effective and fair social welfare systems in the world – yet inequality remains a significant political issue?”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Filmmaker and director Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes’s revelatory documentary The Velvet Underground is the latest in a long career of portraying outsiders.
The Influence
Joel Ma
When Joel Ma was a teenager, his mother took him to see William Yang’s one-man show Sadness, and it changed his life.
Fiction
Double morning day
“Your friend, your handsome friend, he speaks on the screen, stands next to your beaming face and describes parts of you I have never seen, he knows more than me, I who made you, of your sorrow. He makes a joke and people in the room laugh, people whom I have never met, never will and who understand the joke and whose eyes crinkle above their cloth masks. They are pleased for the release. I could attack them, I could bite down on their bones, I am a rabid dog jawing the air.”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
Rhetoric
“Barnaby Joyce is the whoopee cushion of Australian politics.”
The opposition leader attempts to describe Barnaby Joyce’s contribution to debate. The metaphor doesn’t quite work: Joyce’s face is a far brighter shade of red and most of what comes out of his mouth actually stinks.
Climate
“We won’t be lectured by others who do not understand Australia.”
The prime minister explains his climate policy. Outsiders might not understand an Australian man who fears commitments and overestimates his capacity to achieve.
Credit
“I’ve had a gutful … I’m instrumental in this parliament.”
The One Nation leader takes credit for the Coalition’s voter integrity bill, which will disproportionately affect Indigenous people. She just wants recognition, except not that kind.
Medicine
“They are not just circumcising our country; they are castrating it.”
The One Nation senator posts a mock vaccination certificate claiming he has been “Fully Circumcised”. You’d fake the moon landing, too, if you knew alien life like this walked among us.
Farewells
“Being your speaker has been an incredible honour.”
The speaker of the house of representatives announces he will step down next month instead of at the next election. He got through his entire term without once chartering a helicopter to Geelong.
Laws
“I’m not interested in having a debate with them.”
The Victorian premier rejects opposition criticism of new laws that would invest him and his Health minister with extraordinary powers. Unfortunately, having “a debate with them” is sort of the point.
