Editorial

Anthony Albanese outlined his government’s first steps in a plan for universal childcare this week, and they were as sure-footed as any policy that has evolved through decades of setbacks. If Labor wins next year’s election, it will set up a $1 billion building early education fund. This is not a “cash splash”, as the Murdoch papers have described it.

The only real surprise is that the gas lobby felt they had to pay for it. News Corp has shilled so long and so shamelessly for fossil fuels that the publisher could quite honestly say the money Santos and others gave it for this week’s series on gas had no bearing on the journalism. It was compromised by ideology well before it was compromised by cash.

The treatment of asylum seekers is a national sickness. There are no limits to the vindictiveness. Nothing is too immoral. No measures are beyond the brutality of our ferret-eyed politicians.

There is a sad irony in the fact that vicar and vicarious share the same root, that they both trace back to the Latin for substitute. It is within this grim, shared meaning that the church now argues it is not responsible for the actions of its priests.

The piece in the Herald Sun describes Indigenous groups as being “out for blood”. It attributes the line to sources, but of what it doesn’t say. The image is enough: dark figures in the distance, bent on violence and revenge.

Dana White looks like a cauliflower in a suit, except cauliflowers have more charm. When Donald Trump called him up on stage this week, he was calling up the forces that had him re-elected.

There is perhaps no more perfect an illustration of the crudeness of Australian public life, the saucepan on one’s head stupidity, than the fact the commissioner of the country’s leading anti-corruption body is a member of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.

It wasn’t until she saw the king that Lidia Thorpe felt the violence of the moment. “I looked up at the pompous stuff, the extravagance, and then the just blatant disregard for what had happened to our people.”

On Monday, a year to the day since the failed referendum on the Voice, the Northern Territory announced it would again use spit hoods on children. Soon, the Territory parliament will lower the age of criminal responsibility to 10. Both measures will overwhelmingly affect Indigenous children. In both cases, this is deliberate.

When Queensland legalised abortion in 2018, only three Liberal National Party members voted for the reform. One of them, Jann Stuckey, says she was ostracised because of it. People in the party ignored her. Preselections were threatened. Eventually, she quit politics, citing depression.