The Obstacle Is The Way: Stellar Nurseries

There is always adversity at this time of year, he said to his Christian brother; amid the broad indifference of everything.

With the resignation of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, a man responsible for arresting pregnant women in their own home, pepper spraying a 70-year-old grandmother on the street, the man who imposed the world's longest and indeed most draconian lockdowns, Dictator Dan, a hunched and poisonous gnome, some of the last of the perpetrators of Australia's Covid tyranny were disappearing into whatever cosy, corrupt little sinecure they had managed to arrange for themselves.

It was putrid, and nobody cared. Least of all him, in some terrible sense. Nobody listened to the news; perhaps, because they had been gaslighted so often it wasn't in their own best interests, to preserve their mental health. Why bother with the strain of being lied to every single day? Why listen to the corporate manufactured disaster that was television news. Why listen to the government's propaganda outlet, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation? Indeed, why care?

True, they came out to party. He headlined a story "Millions Celebrate" but it was hyperbolic. Daniel Andrews had been despised by the freedom lovers of the country, and regarded as an effwit or a poison dwarf by many others, but that did not stop the Prime Minster from praising him to the sky. Others clicking glasses; or just a sigh at the passing of another piece of bullshit Australian politics, another asshole disappearing into history.

There was a sickness at the heart of the body politic, made up of this terrible ennui, the loss of faith in the media, the increasing struggle to survive, the swamping of the nation with immigrants, the failure of mass migration, the failure, indeed, of everything the government touched. It wasn't dramatic. It was a step by step dissolution. And all you could do was build your own safe place.

Enjoy your life. Work hard. Do the job. Partial to that partial light, listen to them.

The humans, the militarised humans; we were preparing for the future. We plucked our qualities. We defended ourselves. We roamed free while you drowned in sorrow.

Scott Morrison was still there, a parasite lingering on the government benches, unwanted, unloved, sneered and jeered at front, back and sideways, behind whispering hands and straight to his face. But there he was, the Prime Minister who had led the Covid dance, the derangement which had ripped off the face of the country, ripped apart what little sign of society or social cohesion there was, a man whose dank smell you could feel from miles away, that stale sweat smell that hung between the layers of fat, long after the corpus christi had left; leaving all normal flesh to devolve.



How do Catholics celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi?

Such Exposition can take several forms, on the altar in a parish, for adoration and prayer, public devotions such as Eucharistic Benediction, and public processions on Corpus Christi, or at other times. In Catholic countries such processions often go throughout the city.
They came running up the hill. They whispered urgently. But all normal means of communication were broken. "There are still issues," the militarised Watchers on the Watch told him; in benevolence, in silence, in the confused garble of images from down the ages. From that sinking feeling of sadness that was this time; as families were born, grew, established, spilled down the generations.

And humans became nothing but their own style of a stellar nursery, a form of intelligence, devolved, absolved, absorbed into the greater spirit, yet another species contributing to the greatness, the awe inspiring power with which they were all surrounded.

As for Old Alex, he knew not what he did, or why. It felt, some days, as if there really was a Higher Power, although he disliked the simplicity of the concept, the paternal notion behind it.

And they were frightened. And so they should be.




AUSTRALIAN MAINSTREAM MEDIA SITES




THE NEW DAILY




Referendum day on October 14 is looming as the day when a majority of Australians will reject the simple idea of recognising the unique place of First Peoples in the nation’s foundational document is something good to do.

It would confirm that any attempts to complete the unfinished business of our Constitution, as John Howard once described it, are condemned to the gridlock of politics.

There is no chance that the 1967 referendum, which overwhelmingly finally accepted that Indigenous Australians actually existed in the federated nation, will be repeated.

If Yes does somehow manage to reverse the downward spiral of the polls in the next three weeks, it is improbable it will get there with 90.77 per cent of the vote.

It is a huge climb from the 36 per cent support in the latest Newspoll.



And it is well to remember that a major contributor to this outcome is the refusal not only of the Coalition parties but others in the Parliament to see it as above the arm wrestle that is partisan politics.




SKY AUSTRALIA

The Australian's Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan says Daniel Andrews was a “very bad premier” for Victoria.

“You can see that with the massive mountain of state debt that Victoria has,” Mr Sheridan said.

“He’s also, I think, really diminished Victorian institutions – he wouldn’t appear on mainstream radio programs.

“He didn’t respond to all the ethical charges brought against his government.



Mr Sheridan’s comments follow Mr Andrews' resignation as Victorian Premier on Tuesday, with Jacinta Allan being announced as the new Premier of the state.

GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA

Anthony Albanese says pressing ahead with the referendum will have been worth it even if Australians reject the voice on 14 October because it has brought Indigenous disadvantage front and centre in the national conversation.

The prime minister told Guardian Australia he hoped Australians would vote yes because that would be a “unifying moment”. He predicted if the vote was yes, the country would move on “pretty quickly” from the polarisation and “hateful” elements of the referendum debate because the parliament would set about designing and implementing the advisory committee.


If, however, a majority voted no, that would be “disappointing”, Albanese said in an interview with Guardian Australia’s politics podcast.

Anthony Albanese a slow-moving target for Peter Dutton’s one-man insurgency
Katharine Murphy

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But he argued the process had already succeeded in raising consciousness about the gap in outcomes between Indigenous people and the rest of the community, and that focus would continue. “I do think that there will be, from this point on, there will be more of a focus on Indigenous disadvantage,” Albanese said on the podcast.




ABC

The minister responsible for the NDIS says an investigation may be required after it emerged children continued to be secluded in small, windowless rooms at a controversial autism service in Melbourne — despite public assurances the program had closed.

Four Corners aired shocking footage on Monday night that revealed children with autism and intellectual disabilities were unlawfully pinned to the ground facedown by up to six workers as part of a controversial therapy funded by the NDIS.

Key points:Bill Shorten has responded to a Four Corners investigation into the NDIS.
The minister said he found the footage aired as "shocking".
He said he was "perplexed" to discover some of the practices continued into last year.


The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner, Tracy Mackey, told Four Corners the Severe Behaviour Program at Irabina Autism Services was closed in 2021 after the prohibited practices were discovered.

But a speech pathologist has since said she witnessed some restrictive practices such as seclusion when she visited Irabina in February 2022.

Speaking to ABC Radio National on Wednesday, Minister for the NDIS, Bill Shorten, said he was "perplexed" to discover that some of the practices continued into last year.