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A few days and one Sydney outbreak ago, I was in Canberra with our political reporter Kishor Napier-Raman. With the parliamentary winter recess coming there was a palpable sense of relief in government circles that things were going OK not spectacular, but OK.
How quickly things change. Barnaby blows up the Nationals and unsettles the Coalition; the Australian National Audit Office exposes a rort of eye-watering proportions; and the prime minister starts to appear very vulnerable on the vaccine rollout and quarantine issues.
Crikey has been highlighting this latter point for months now, and this past week the PM’s state allies and the news media have caught on: the PM is getting lost in his own spin.
Crikey Weekender crikey.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from crikey.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Many of us are keen to stop hearing the “b” word budget but there’s no getting around it. The budget was historical for its big-spending measures (though thanks to many pre-budget announcements, it was also historically boring).
The
Crikey team spent six hours in budget lockup (and many more afterwards) analysing it, with Bernard Keane commenting on the Liberals’ money-backed ploy to stay in power, Guy Rundle writing on Labor’s lack of a narrative, while I covered the cuts and investments in the social sector. Despite the rhetoric around women in this budget, Cam Wilson found the Liberals were targeting young men and retirees in their advertising spend, while Kishor Napier-Raman took a look at the budget’s secrets.
Last modified on Mon 3 May 2021 00.31 EDT
Rage is a good place to start
After being cancelled last year due to the pandemic, 2021âs Sydney writersâ festival began with fury: an opening address shared by Melissa Lucashenko, Tara June Winch and Evelyn Araluen, and taken by all three as an opportunity to advocate for justice. As Araluen put it: âAboriginal women know what it is to be silenced, ignored or wilfully misinterpreted by those who do not wish to hear what needs to be said.â
Lucashenko told a parable which had at its core the damage wrought by gentrification, as it âhits country NSW like a freight trainâ. Winch, stuck in France with a tab open on the Stranded Aussies forum, gave a forceful speech about how Australia looks from afar â violent, racist and in denial â and how uncomfortable it feels for her to be grouped into the âidentity crisisâ that is âAussieâ in the first place.