Mark’s news digest March 9, 2021
Mark’s news digest March 9, 2021. This weekend’s digest of national and international news by Mark O’Brien. Click on the links to go to the original publisher’s page
Now that Christian Porter has decided to ‘take space’ for a week or two, maybe longer, for his mental health welfare (meaning that he cannot be hounded by questions) it means that Australia not only does not have a Defense Minister (ie, there is nobody in charge) for the next month but possibly no Attorney General as well.
This is an excellent chess move by Scomo – if ministers come under too much scrutiny and heat (deserved or not, it is the nature of politics after all that you are fair game, and the jury, in the public eye, is out whether a rape actually took place – which is the crux of the current battle, that women should be believed when they cry rape, because stats show that 95% of those who made a complaint were in fact raped) then they can simply plead ‘mental health struggles’ and they become untouchable, off limits.
Straight out of Scomo’s playbook – I just hope that the opposition can keep this story alive until every woman feels the burn, questions whether the historical sexual assault that she or her friends remember that nobody really paid attention to, really happened, and speaks out.
Following the Canberra sexual abuse and inequality explosion
Canberra’s pale, stale and male tribe is missing the moment – as it did with Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech by Katharine Murphy
Morrison’s response to the allegation against Christian Porter raises uncomfortable questions
‘This is the moment to get really pissed off’: Australian women demand change to heal wounds
Australian politics
The movement that got rid of Tony Abbott has set sights upon Angus Taylor
Gladys Berejiklian denies making decisions to benefit secret boyfriend Daryl Maguire
Teflon Gladys somehow gets away with stuff in a whole different order of magnitude than anyone else in Australian politics. By telling her boyfriend that she did not want to know what shenanigans he was up to she is assuming it was corrupt but clearly not enough to report him or just stop the relationship – she is the Premier of NSW FFS, and yes, she needs connection and all that means as much as the next person, but it showed very poor judgement as Premier
Covid news
Dutch clubbers hit dancefloor for study into easing lockdown
Good lateral Dutch thinking.
Environment
Five climate resolutions for 2021 including actioning the resolutions
Some of these are obvious but certainly worth a read
UK investor hit by more big losses from Australia solar farms, sales delayed
Denmark, system used to generate fresh water powered by sewage system
Social
No excuse for gender inequality, sexism on IWD 2021, say corporate leaders
“We Do This ’Til We Free Us”: Mariame Kaba on Abolishing Police, Prisons & Moving Toward Justice
This news digest was inspired by the recent Facebook stoush and the opportunity it presented to revisit our idea of Facebook and how we use it, even as we allow it to track what we look at and provide news and ads that it thinks we want.
Get your news here, and ‘stay off the Facebook grid’.
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