The Australian 25 March 2011
Customs were taking a boatload of asylum seekers to Broome as there was rioting on Christmas Island and on the way put them ashore on Ashmore Reef for an hour so that they will be processed as offshore arrivals rather than deemed to have made the mainland.
This strikes me as a particularly shitty thing to do.
The Australian 25 March 2011
The placard is the way that crazy people announced their views to the world before twitter, and is still the social medium of choice for an angry mob, because it’s quite difficult to securely affix an iPhone to a stick (rumours of an iStick coming next spring notwithstanding) and too much spittle on the screen can void the warranty.
Now just as retweeting is not necessarily an endorsement of said tweet, being photographed in front of a placard, while not a good look, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in agreement with its sentiments, though Australians should be free to draw their own conclusions because this is a free country and I am not one to stop people from holding their own views on things.
*Note: there is no apostrophe on the placard as, while I’m not an English teacher, the grammar on the apostrophe isn’t settled yet and not even all English teachers agree on the apostrophe**.
**Okay, most English teachers probably do agree on the apostrophe, but they’re all hopeless at maths***, so the statistics aren’t in yet.
***Probably true.
The Hobart Mercury 23 March 2011
I’m not entirely sure what pulp mill everyone thought they were talking about up to this point, but Tasmania’s forest, er, peace talks have peacefully segued from vague mentions of “a” nice, friendly, peaceful pulp mill to “the” pulp mill. Remember that one?
Anyway it seems to boil down to “hand over the social licence or the trees get it”. Good luck with that, everybody.
Campbell “Can Do” Newman is spearheading a bold LNP experiment in leading an Opposition without actually having a seat in the House.
This will be keenly watched by the NSW Labor Party who next week will be attempting to run an Opposition without any sitting members at all.
