Comment

Eddie McGuire is not the end, as much as the AFL would like him to be. A culture as toxic as the one described in the report that finally ended his 22-year tenure as Collingwood president cannot be seeded and maintained by one man.

Stunning everyone and overturning centuries of tradition, Eddie McGuire has now become the first white Australian ever forced from his job due to a prolonged commitment to racism. This has confused a country accustomed to the established method of dealing with racism in Australia, wherein the victim is pushed out of their job, hounded in the press and media, labelled a “sook” because our discourse is just barely above “I’m rubber and you’re glue, and what bounces off me sticks to you”, before it’s claimed that racism is a thing that happens only in America.

On Monday Scott Morrison walked into RAAF Base Williamtown near Newcastle to the soundtrack of the movie Top Gun. It may have been appropriate to his mission that day – lauding the progress of the Joint Strike Fighter program – but it was a parody of his helplessness in the endless climate war.

Like the dog that caught the car, Australian conservatives have succeeded in a decades-long quest to crush the bargaining power of unions and workers. And, in turn, they have succeeded in crushing average wage growth.

Six months ago, Bob Brown launched a legal challenge many said would rival his storied campaign to save the Franklin River. If successful, the case would have invalidated Tasmania’s regional forestry agreement, which, like other such agreements around the country, is exempted from Australia’s key environmental law – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. This week, the Federal Court ruled against Brown and his foundation. Tasmania’s agreement will hold.

In the good old days, conspiracy theories were mostly limited to when your uncle had too much to drink at family dinners and would whisper unbelievable things with undue confidence such as: “The world is flat.” Or, “The moon landing was faked, and I don’t care how many people Buzz Aldrin punches."

Try as he might, Scott Morrison can’t help letting slip his early-election ambitions. His most telling giveaway was in his first pep talk of the year to the Coalition party room in the Great Hall at Parliament House. But the prime minister merely confirmed the buzz of expectation that was already spreading through the corridors of power.

The suffering has been intense. No costumes, no theatre, no crowds, no greasepaint. Barristers have been beside themselves for months as Covid-19 cancelled performances in courtrooms throughout the land. To have one’s stage so cruelly confiscated is a bitter pill for legal thespians who spent the best years of their life perfecting special flourishes and routines.

Sometimes people end up where they belong. This is not how Tony Abbott became prime minister but it is how he found himself working at the Institute of Public Affairs. That a man can go from leading the country to making Facebook videos for a right-wing think tank is evidence of the great lack in our politics.

In August 1786, William Roberts of Cornwall was arrested for stealing a little more than two kilograms of yarn. No one knows what he wanted with that much yarn. Whatever the case, the justice system was taking no risks with this yarn aficionado, and sent him to Sydney – a fitting punishment for anyone, even to this day. A few years later, Roberts married Kezia Brown, originally from Gloucester, who had been convicted of stealing clothing. Perhaps the two bonded over their love of fabrics.