Hayesy days Farewell to Karen Hayes, who has resigned as CEO of Guide Dogs Victoria. This immediately follows the election, and her disastrous and controversial decision to appear in a flyer for former treasurer and departed member for Kooyong Josh Frydenberg, complete with cute puppy. Strange, it worked so well for National Lampoon.
Burke’s brick Today is the swearing in of the new Anthony Albanese ministry, and while some of the focus will be on, say, Tanya Plibersek’s loss of the education portfolio (despite her publicly stated preference to stay with it), our only thoughts will be on new Minister for the Arts Tony Burke and his choice of bible, apparently as written by David Foster Wallace.
Governor-General David Hurley’s table groaned under the weight of the gargantuan tome, which we’re amazed Burke was able to haul into the room without the aid of wheels.
I’ve gotta Hinch Former senator, broadcasting legend, jailbird and Crikey contributor Derryn Hinch has been around the block a few times, so we’re always interested to see his take on the politics of the day:
We can’t put our finger on it, but we have to say we agree: something changed, maybe a bit over a week ago, and suddenly Anthony Albanese is indistinguishable from a prime minister.
No need to Bragg It will not surprise that Albanese quoted Billy Bragg — “Just because you’re going forwards, doesn’t mean I’m going backwards” — in his first press conference. Indeed he quoted Bragg early on in his time as opposition leader. It may not be the first set of tunes the heartland Australian voters reach for, but Bragg’s heavily accented socialist-humanism clearly means a lot to Albanese. Bragg replied this morning, talking about his history with Albanese, mentioning that the result had buoyed progressives in the UK facing the Boris Johnson government that uses similar wedge politics to those that that failed to reelect Morrison.
You may recall that both Bragg and Albanese have appeared on Crikey‘s interview series Crikey Talks. We’re not trying to claim too much credit, but perhaps if outgoing prime minister Scott Morrison hadn’t ignored our requests to appear, we might be seeing a similar tweet from Tina Arena this morning.
I can almost smell your TB sheets In its first two years, COVID-19 took many legendary musicians from us — John Prine, Toots Hibbert, Anne Feeney, Charley Pride, Adam Schlesinger, Manu Dibango and many others succumbed to the virus. It seems like the primary way the remaining years of the pandemic will rob us of great Boomer/Gen X artists will be to reveal them to be such right royal berks that you can’t quite go back to their “best of” with the same enthusiasm.
Obviously there have been the middlebrow rock stylings of Enoch Powell campaigner Eric Clapton and his anti-mandate track “This Has Gotta Stop“. He’s been joined as the bard of the anti-vax set by Van Morrison, who released three anti-lockdown tracks in late 2020 and is now suing Northern Ireland’s Department of Health and its minister Robin Swann over an opinion piece he wrote for Rolling Stone saying people shouldn’t take health advice from Van Morrison, no matter how hard “Caravan” slaps.
“His words will give great comfort to the conspiracy theorists — the tinfoil-hat brigade who crusade against masks and vaccines and think this is all a huge global plot to remove freedoms,” Swann wrote. The exact grounds of the legal action (which follow a case that Swann brought against Van late last year) haven’t been confirmed by Morrison’s lawyers.
