Hello, happy Saturday, and welcome to Five Great Reads, which we’re bringing back today for the first time since the start of the year. Happy summer, too (more on that later).
In this weekly dispatch, my colleague Kris Swales and I will take you through the best things we’ve read worldwide on the Guardian all week, from on-point analysis and startling confessions to recipes and reviews.
Turn back around if you’ve come here for breaking news or World Cup coverage (we’ll have a blog on Sunday morning for Australia’s game against Argentina – kickoff is at 6am, and there’s plenty of other coverage meanwhile).
Get yourself a coffee or tea, or water (although not too much) and settle in for some good writing.
1. Scott Morrison has no regrets
On Wednesday, parliament censured the former prime minister Scott Morrison over the secret ministries scandal. Guardian Australia’s political editor, Katharine Murphy, had questions. Namely, why he chose to turn up. But, given that, why he then elected to show no humility, or even regret.
Shorter Scott Morrison: I wasn’t that bad. If you wanted to know what I didn’t tell you, why didn’t you ask? #auspol @AmyRemeikis
— Katharine Murphy (@murpharoo) November 29, 2022
“If I’d failed like Morrison, I’d need to stay in my room for a very long stretch until I’d found the words to convey the depths of my sorrow,” Murphy writes. “I would feel the weight of my misjudgments like a wound.”
It’s a scathingly good piece of commentary that doesn’t stop at Morrison but takes in the Liberal party at large (many of whom, bar a staunch Bridget Archer, warmly congratulated the member for Cook following his show of public disdain).
Further reading: Murphy’s new Quarterly Essay on Anthony Albanese is out now. If you missed it last weekend, this extract is a great way to whet your appetite/tide you through until you have time for the full edition on a beach somewhere.
2. Notes from the protest zone
Over the past week, protests in China have unfolded at a scale not seen in decades. They are largely a backlash against punitive lockdown measures as the country struggles with its zero-Covid policy. As Xuyang Dong has written: “It’s the first time many [young people] have expressed their frustration at authorities. Protesting in an authoritarian country comes with huge personal risks.”
On condition of anonymity, four people in various cities spoke to the Guardian about what it’s like on the ground – and their stories are fascinating. Reactions are mixed, there’s uncertainty about where the protests might lead, and information is hard to get.
“I suspect the majority of the population does not know that other countries have largely done away with Covid restrictions,” one says.
“Most international news websites are blocked here,” says another. “We use an illegal VPN to gain access, and a lot of younger people will find ways to get information. You must have the appetite to find out what’s really happening.”
3. The creeping dread of drunk mummy memes
“Social media serves up the perfect mum cocktail,” my colleague Molly Glassey writes with bleak acuity. “One part subliminal messaging, one part sleep deprivation, shake thoroughly and garnish with self-denial.”
She takes a funny, honest and kind-of-scary look at the quicksand of the algorithm for new parents – how amid all the mumfluencers and OshKosh ads, the not-so-subtle message being pushed is how nice it would be to have a drink.
How long will it take to read: about a minute-and-a-half, or one Bounce Patrol song.
4. The new Sydney Opera House?
After an eight-year, $344m wait, the Sydney Modern project opens today – a major expansion and rejuvenation of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. It’s billed as the city’s most significant cultural project since the Opera House opened in 1973, so we got University of Tasmania architecture professor Julian Worrall to take a tour. After ambling through the “airy cascade of new galleries”, he came through with the extravagant review this extravagant complex deserves. Enjoy.
Pick a team: Is Sydney Modern “loose-limbed, relaxed, approachable … clad in fine light-coloured fabrics, but never over-dressed; [padding] barefoot with easy grace over both infrastructural concrete and weathered sandstone down to the harbour’s edge”?
Or more like, as one person suggested in the comments, “a bus station”?
5. The guide to everything
Plans for the end of the year? Don’t answer until you’ve had a play on Summer in the City, our enormous and wizardly guide to the season’s best events in every capital. Our tireless culture editors teamed up with Guardian Australia’s arts writers and critics to curate a list of everything good, which will be regularly updated until February. It’s just what the doctor ordered to get us through – and I quote a colleague – “this wet hot cursed La Niña summer”.
Not sure where to start? Sort by location, sort by category, sort by date – or, maybe more importantly, sort by what’s free.
Honourable mentions
Lorena Allam’s analysis on the rough campaign rhetoric emerging around the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum.
Lauren John Joseph’s extraordinary family story about growing up with a mother who acted more like a sister – and the tender and bruising legacy.
This review of the trailer for Cocaine Bear, for making me snort (not like that) in the office.
Thoughts? Feelings? Poems? Email us at australia.newsletters@theguardian.com And …
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