Editorial

It is easy to miss Gina Rinehart’s vanity, although it is always there. It is vanity that undergirds her litigiousness. It is the brace for the selfishness of her business.

Most of the people who signed the letter sought to have their names redacted before it was released. They are hidden under a long, grey stele: not too ashamed to lobby for mining concessions, but ashamed enough to keep it secret.

In the video, aired by the ABC, the boy screams out in desperation. The officers pin him to the floor. A third officer joins, then a fourth. He is pulled up off the ground and his head is pushed forward as he is forced into another cell, his hands now cuffed behind him. A mattress is thrown in after him.

This week, that same republican prime minister stood in the parliament for the swearing in of another governor-general. Acknowledging the King’s representative, he said: “In Her Excellency Sam Mostyn, our nation has the right leader.” This same republican prime minister said the governor-general exists at the heart of the country.

The fault is the media’s also. It entertains the nonsense, repeats it until it is real. It pretends there is debate where there is none. It leans too heavily on conflict. It mistakes credulity for balance. It is in these false equivalences that Peter Dutton finds his purpose.

When Kim Williams wants to make a point, he looks a person dead in the eye. He does not shy from confrontation. He does not blink. In his first major speech as chair of the ABC, Williams has articulated a strident vision for the national broadcaster. It will be bigger, smarter and more willingly self-critical.

Among the stories that accompanied The Daily Telegraph’s Bush Summit last year was a detailed account of a very large pig stalking a farmer on a property outside Tamworth. “Everyone is scared of them,” the grazier told the tabloid. “There is a big black 130kg razorback boar and I know he is watching me.

The right thing, now, would be to open the sealed section of the robodebt royal commission. The institutions in which the commissioner put her faith have all failed.

The statement from Justin Stevens is eight sentences long. If crabs could write, their words would be as chinless and scuttling. Nowhere does the ABC’s news director attempt to support his political reporter. Nowhere does he try to engage with the truth of what she said the weekend before.

Angus Taylor clearly did not want to be there. The nervous laugh, the rapidly evaporating expressions showed his discomfort. How must it feel to stand before a roomful of your colleagues and journalists and know you have nothing to say?