Richard Flanagan traces the lies and deceit behind Tasmanian salmon: State and federal governments have protected Tasmania’s foreign-owned salmon industry, and the imminent loss of the Maugean skate exposes the price of such state capture #auspol #politas
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Richard Flanagan: “If the Maugean skate goes extinct, it will be the first species in global history known to be driven to extinction by a single industry, and that will happen with the support of the governments of the day.” #auspol #politas
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“Sometimes we forget books that are masterly in their quietness, as if realism, by itself, is assimilated without leaving a trace.” Peter Craven on Gabriel García Márquez, and the new posthumous novel #UntilAugust
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May issue out Monday (online today for subscribers). Featuring Richard Flanagan on the destruction wrought by Tasmanian salmon farming, Marian Wilkinson on who’s behind Dutton’s nuclear push, Isabelle Reinecke on NDAs and FOI, Jonathan Green, Sarah Krasnostein, David Neustein and more. mnth.ly/GLtxEpK

Rebecca Huntley on the gender pay gap: “Canavan lives in a Mad Hatter’s tea party world where simply calling out discrimination is discrimination. His assertion that closing the gender pay gap will continue to alienate young men is laughable.” #auspol
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Peter Craven: “Credibility in #UntilAugust is everywhere a matter of suspending disbelief in the face of ritualised absurdities, but Gabriel García Márquez exhibits a greater consistency of texture and tone than he seems to have realised.”
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Mireille Juchau on Sheila Heti’s #AlphabeticalDiaries : “Heti’s frank vulnerability is refreshing in a world where irreproachable selves are increasingly curated online. Yet she also plays with the frisson of self-exposure.”
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“The election is Trump’s to win if he can attract enough voters beyond the base he commands, who have lost confidence in Biden and who hear his ‘America First’ siren song.” Author of ‘Trump’s Australia’ Bruce Wolpe on the presidential race
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Angela Savage on letting your kids go: “The first of the eggs hatches the day before my daughter finishes her exams, the last on the day of her high school graduation. The tiny, blind, featherless chicks are as helpless as newborn human babies.”
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Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre Bruce Wolpe on the presidential race: “For now, Biden faces a huge deficit in the polls. But it’s hardly insurmountable with seven months to go. There will be surprises.”
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“I’m not a fan of shame-based tactics, but I’ve also worked with enough executive teams and boards to know that nothing focuses their attention on an issue more than public embarrassment.” Rebecca Huntley on mandatory gender pay gap reporting #auspol
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Don Watson on the late director Michael Jenkins: “Inevitably, ‘Scales of Justice’ was ‘controversial’. The police made their displeasure known. But at a royal commission 10 years later the show was vindicated, the police rather less so.”
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“Our daughter is a nestling, an only child who has spent a significant amount of time at home with her parents, due in part to Covid lockdowns, in part to her tendency as a homebody.” Angela Savage on children leaving the nest
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Don Watson on the Ned Kelly film he and Michael Jenkins never got to make: “In Dublin, the young Aiden Gillen did an astonishing turn as our hero. We would have hired him on the spot – if we’d had the money.”
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Rebecca Huntley on the gender pay gap: “The focus groups I conduct show there is a lack of understanding about the detrimental impacts of the gender gap (a $51.8 billion cost to the economy annually, according to federal government modelling).” #auspol
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“Fiamē has more of a sense of herself than anyone I have ever met. The word Pacific peoples use to describe this is mana, referring to the power of the elemental forces of nature, as well as a sort of ‘moral authority’ or ‘prestige’.” | Ceridwen Spark
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Jock Serong visits the arts school in the former Fletcher Jones factory: “For Gareth Colliton, finding a creative home for kids feels like an extension of Fletcher’s values. ‘Whatever it was that FJ was tapping into, we’re tapping into the same thing.’”
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.Kate Jinx on Wim Wender’s latest: “A steady, meditative film, #PerfectDays offers a soft lens with which to view one’s lot, or, depending how you choose to look at it, a supportive framework to keep on keeping on.”
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Gabriel García Márquez’s posthumous #UntilAugust : “A ravishing piece of writing, with a commanding formal power, whatever you make of the merry-go-round of sexual encounters that constitute its sometimes startling sometimes hauntingly familiar plot.”
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“While not strictly a sequel to the earlier book, #BrooklynCrimeNovel reads as a rebuttal of sorts, or at the very least an attempt at a do-over.” Michael Williams on Jonathan Lethem’s latest
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