Editorial

Giving a major speech at The Sydney Institute is a little like sneezing into a matchbox but only if the matchbox is empty and no one is around. This is the forum in which Angus Taylor chose to articulate his first proper riposte to Pauline Hanson and the rise of One Nation.

Last year’s election was the ugliest this country has seen. Volunteers report being spat at and intimidated. Christian zealots were bussed around the country to crowd booths.

Karl Stefanovic has always been a clown. That is the point of breakfast television. He can turn up for work drunk after a night at the Logies and the only difference is that he laughs a little harder at his own jokes.

The first thing to say about Pauline Hanson is how unimpressive she is as a speaker. To watch her address to the National Press Club was to watch a bigoted archaeopteryx flail through an hour-and-a-half of talking points.

For a brief moment, little more than half a minute, Tanya Plibersek articulates what is wrong with One Nation. She captures the obstruction and the hypocrisy. She circles the emptiness. Barnaby Joyce blinks slowly as he watches, swallowing like a bullfrog in a quilted vest.

This is about how a former minister treats a young woman who once worked for her, who was raped in her office, who she called a lying cow in front of her colleagues, whose legal documents she leaked to a newspaper, whom she bankrupted and whom she now accuses of profiting from her own abuse.

The audit report confirms what has long been obvious: the Australian National University’s catastrophic restructure was neither necessary nor prudent. It was decided on by a council with limited insight and only arbitrary financial details. When it was clear it was failing, no changes were made.

People who worked with Paul Brereton at the National Anti-Corruption Commission say he suffered from the baggage of being a judge. He could never step down from the remove of the bench.

How can it be that a woman goes into a strange house and her body is later found dumped in a fridge and no one is prosecuted for her murder? Her name was Isla Bell. She was 19. This week, she was remembered by her family as a gem, an exquisitely beautiful soul. She walked everywhere with an open heart.