May 30 – June 5, 2020
News
Comment
Comment
Patricia Turner
Collaboration on Closing the Gap
“It was only three months ago that the prime minister stood up in parliament to make his latest report on the progress of Closing the Gap. Just two of seven targets, he revealed, are on track to be met by 2025. The gap itself is a difficult concept. By its very nature, improvements do not always mean it is narrowed. For instance, while Indigenous mortality rates and child mortality rates have improved slightly, so have those for non-Indigenous Australians, meaning the gap remains – and Indigenous children still face a mortality rate twice that of their non-Indigenous peers. ”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
Unplugging the economy’s life support
“At the National Press Club on Tuesday, Scott Morrison went all medical as he framed his prescription for economic recovery. Key ministers in the room smiled their nodding approval when he said: ‘At some point you’ve got to get your economy out of ICU. You’ve got to get it off the medication before it becomes too accustomed to it.’ ”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Singer-songwriter Gordi
Since releasing her first album, Gordi has experienced three years of emotional upheaval, which she has channelled into a new record, Our Two Skins. She speaks to Nick Buckley about losing her grandmother, falling in love over the phone and creating music in self-enforced isolation. “That’s when I feel most creative, when I don’t have everything at my disposal. You know, how I might make one sound if I don’t have that thing. It’s like creating unique moments out of nothing.”
Fiction
The goddess garden
“I have been walking on the weekends to visit the goddess garden. Sometimes I wish that all life expected of me was one walk each day, to admire the things that grow without our encouragement. I wish that once my walk was over, I could disappear in the bowels of my home, to neither suffer nor experience joy, as I find both to be quite tiring. Instead, I have a job and a family I love, who love me back. I have meals to cook and eat, and a cat with a litter tray in the laundry.”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
OPENINGS
“I hate this dictatorship.”
The senator threatens to file a legal challenge unless Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk reopens the state’s borders, continuing One Nation’s storied legacy of advocating open borders.
INFINITY
“Open your eyes, look up to the skies.”
The Tesla founder and father of X Æ A-Xii tweets ahead of his company SpaceX’s first crewed flight. Liftoff was cancelled on Thursday due to bad weather.
INTELLIGENCE
“Here’s a message for those on Twitter who buy the crazy conspiracy theory about me working as a spy for Hillary Clinton.”
The former Foreign minister tells his followers that it’s “lucky I’m not litigious”.
MINING
“Rio Tinto has worked constructively together with the PKKP People on a range of heritage matters.”
The mining giant commemorates National Reconciliation Week by demolishing a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal sacred site in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
EQUALITY
“I don’t think I am so different and that there is one rule for me and one rule for other people.”
The special adviser to Boris Johnson defends his breaching of Britain’s lockdown laws after driving 400 kilometres to his father’s country estate.
FUNDRAISING
“Turns out that studying acting at university doesn’t make me a lawmaker.”
The comedian responds to a court decision that the $51 million she raised for the New South Wales Rural Fire Service cannot be shared with other charities.
