Call me late to the party, but this submarine commentary has been on the back burner for a couple of weeks. As long-term readers would know, I often eschew the 24/7 news cycle, in favour of (ahem) in-depth reports. The headline might look like an outrageous flogging in a rugby match, but it is actually the fact of the matter. North Korea, with a population close to ours (25 million), has 71 submarines. Australia has just six….
As the Winter Solstice came and went and our wood heater consumed the last of 2020’s firewood, the US mid-west was sweltering through an early summer heatwave. Australia is, hopefully, at least five months away from its first hot spell. But in the US mid-west states, which have been in the grip of the worst drought in 20 years, the mercury is rising. Cue Martha and the Vandellas.. Canadian relatives had already been posting photos…
We’d been out to dinner on Budget night, so turning on the TV later, I caught the last comment from Lee Sales: “That completes our first hour of this special Budget coverage.” Budget analysis is a challenging topic for extended television viewing. The ABC borrowed David Speers from Insiders (wearing a blue suit and maroon socks), who took over to talk to a bank of television sets, splitting this up with breath-taking interludes (“Crossing now…
If Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton ever had a lapse in judgement, it would be thinking that asylum seekers and their supporters have given up. Over a seven-year span, Mr Dutton and his predecessors have exposed asylum seekers to a punitive system (which is outside the UN Convention on Refugees). As you may hear this weekend, Sunday marks seven years of detention for those who were sent to centres on Manus Island and Nauru. At…