We come to the top of one other 12 months of Ideas and Murmurs, Crikey‘s repository for all of the gossip we’ve heard and the bizarre stuff we’ve observed, and the gossip you’ve heard and the bizarre stuff you observed. Big due to everybody who prompt we take a more in-depth take a look at this or that all year long — we are able to’t wait to listen to from you once more in 2024. Till then, right here’s a number of a few of our 2023 favourites:
Which certainly one of you drongos tried to ship Scott Morrison a bag of weed? (November 9): What appears to have occurred is that somebody despatched a bag of weed within the put up to an illegible tackle, and put the return tackle as “Scott Morrison, Canberra”. So when the satan’s lettuce in query couldn’t be delivered to its addressee, it will definitely discovered its solution to the parliamentary mail room.
Now we don’t need to accuse somebody who sends baggage of primo bambalachacha by the mail — and places “the place the politicians reside” because the return tackle — of fuzzy pondering, but when it’s an elaborate prank, it’s a little bit of a bizarre one. Morrison wasn’t even PM at that time. Was the sinsemilla provided by means of comfort, coming roughly every week after his job received decidedly much less hectic, perhaps?
A non-exhaustive checklist of all the things that’s “woke” in keeping with The Australian (June 19):
And far, way more…
Peak AFR (July 6): The Australian Monetary Evaluate often wears the popularity of being a paper for folks with names corresponding to Plutus P. Moneyfellows, who wouldn’t feed what your loved ones eats at Christmas to the hounds on their property, who’re so infuriated by the considered baristas getting weekend penalty charges that their high hat merely flies off their head, touchdown within the caviar holder and comically splattering their dinner company. There are days when this appears unfair. After which there are days like this.
Whereas Australia struggles with a cost-of-living disaster, as housing and childcare companies slip from the grasp of regular folks, help companies are maxed out and supermarkets brace for elevated shoplifting of primary meals gadgets, the AFR snorted the headline “Why CEOs needs to be paid extra” into the again of its throat and hocked it into readers’ faces.
Maybe feeling that the bandaid was off, that very same day the paper additionally introduced it was launching “Australia’s first status watch truthful”.
The upshot of marriage equality laid naked: the loveless union of two male penguins (July 4): Advocates for marriage equality on this nation should dangle their heads in disgrace. We blithely dismissed the issues of conventional marriage exponents about the place such adjustments to our social cloth would possibly lead us. We have been smug and complacent, and we can not say we weren’t warned.
It will need to have been a bittersweet form of vindication for Household First chief Lyle Shelton to place out a press launch regarding the place the rainbow Gestapo has dragged us: two male penguins “manipulated” right into a loveless marriage.
Historic tennis membership beneath risk from native title declare (September 8): 2GB host Ben Fordham introduced us the story on the way forward for the Naremburn Tennis Courts, and claims that the membership had been solid right into a storm of uncertainty due to an unresolved Aboriginal land rights declare.
I imply, I can solely ask, how would the Metropolitan Native Aboriginal Land Councils of this world prefer it if that form of factor was finished to them?
Having to take care of the fallout of some form of land seize, to have irreplaceable websites of deep historical past and neighborhood destroyed with the stroke of a pen, with generations passing earlier than something approaching justice may very well be even reluctantly mentioned? You possibly can’t even think about.
By their logic, Peter Dutton and Michaelia Money is likely to be ineligible for Parliament (September 1): No matter these whingers on the Australian Electoral Fee and elsewhere should say about “damaging and opportunistic assaults on democratic establishments” or no matter, it’s a common reality: all ticks imply sure and all crosses imply no. Which is why we have been horrified when a tipster received in contact to direct us in direction of Dutton’s register of {qualifications}:
Oh. My. God.
