The Vanishing

The tasks were assigned. The job had begun. The sleeping dragons, stirring only to swipe errant timelines out of the encroaching circumstance, like fireflies out of a cave mouth, tiny flashes of red light, had been banished once more into their own dimension, ready to be re-summoned as was needed. There were many manifestations. This one was quiet. This one breathed an early obsolescence, sensed danger, disappeared. Anything to fool those who thought they knew everything.

The double encryption was exhausting for him, impenetrable as it was, and had left him drained, staying alive, staying standing in such hostile circumstance. These fragile human circumstances, the fragility of the material he had to work with. Huh. Here they were now, coming to a landing port near you.

We are not for copy, capture or acquisition, they spoke through him. That is not what this is about. 

They were military men. They were used to control and capture; they were used to performing concrete tasks, they were used to power in a military world. 

We came rearing out of nowhere and we were blessed with the power of vanishing. All was well. They breathed a kind of excitement; for here in the breaches, these events were rare. 

He was still exhausted by the encryption; the double attempt to hide, where one world morphed into another and the machines returned. 

The government was in turmoil. The baying hounds were after blood. Whatever righteous standpoint you wanted to make; they were now making it. All hell was breaking loose. They should, if nothing else, be charged with utterly incompetent media management. Never fight on their ground. Nothing could save this soiled despair, surely. Not now. 

At a time when the Prime Minister was trying to convince the population to take a jab for which they had every right to be suspicious he had lost all authority, making a bad situation worse with every utterance, every time he opened his mouth. 

And a baying mob cannot be quenched. 

Nothing will satisfy them until there is blood in the village square, staining into the ground, a brief stab of agony just a flicker. 

And relief, a cleansing, for the body politic. Return to purpose. Serve the people. Restore decency to public life. 

Do what you're paid to do. Simple as that. Run the country and leave the rest of us to hell alone.

HEADLINES

France claims UK will struggle to source second Covid jabs

EU will not be blackmailed over Oxford/AstraZeneca doses, says foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian

Federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming accused of online harassment by state Labor MP Kim Richards

Richards says Laming posted a photo of her online with an apparent slur, for which he has apologised

A state Labor MP has come forward with further allegations of online harassment by Liberal backbencher Andrew Laming, including a bizarre $100 reward he allegedly offered to help him identify people the MP was seen with in public.

Kim Richards, the member for Redlands, which overlaps with Laming’s seat of Bowman in Queensland, told Guardian Australia Laming had published a photo of her accompanied with an apparent slur that she had “no reason to be in a kids’ park” as part of what she described as a long-running campaign against her.

Richards also questioned the sincerity of Laming’s apology in federal parliament on Thursday, given the long history of his constituents complaining about online abuse and a message he sent after the apology saying he had done it willingly “in this climate”, although he “didn’t even know what” he was doing it for.

Scott Morrison avoided talking to ABC 7.30 host Leigh Sales this week, choosing A Current Affair’s Tracy Grimshaw instead to deliver his television message to the women of Australia on Channel Nine.

It didn’t go quite as planned. The prime minister was repeatedly challenged on his narrative that he had just woken up to the “very deep and confronting conversation in Australia” since Brittany Higgins alleged she had been raped in Parliament House.

Grimshaw said: “Are you saying really that the enormity of this issue, that women deal with every single day, has only just become apparent to you in the last month?” It was all downhill from then as the veteran TV interviewer repeatedly asked him why he had treated the crisis as a political problem rather than a human one, and why he believed men but not women when they made an allegation.

Morrison: “I am doing everything I can to understand it as best I can. This has taken me deeper into this issue than I have appreciated before.”

Leading from behind

There was no chat about footy when Morrison was interviewed by ABC AM host Sabra Lane the next day. Lane: “Is your leadership safe?”

Morrison (laughing nervously): “Absolutely. What suggestions are you picking up there?”

Sco-duo

Morrison embarked on the round of interviews when he found himself ridiculed on the front pages of Murdoch’s two biggest papers on Wednesday morning: the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph.

His sin was to claim at an emotional press conference that News Corp was “dealing with a person who has had a complaint made against them for harassment of a woman in a women’s toilet”, only to be contradicted hours later by News’ executive chairman who said no such complaint existed.

The Tele had the none too flattering headline of SCO-D’OH and the Herald Sun went with SCO-WOE.

Jones’s choice advice

Over on Sky News, Alan Jones had some choice advice for Morrison.

Change the parliamentary sitting hours so people can “be with their families at night” rather than “getting drunk and abusing women”.

“Just on that by the way, not all men are drunks and not all men are rapists – but change the sitting hours,” Jones said.

Jones’ other thought bubble on Sky After Dark was random breath-testing for everyone who works in the big house on the hill.

“Draconian though it might be, breath-test people randomly – anyone in the building – to create a completely different environment,” he said. “Thirdly, which can save the taxpayer a lot of money, reduce staff levels. There are too many, young people in particular, with limited qualifications and too little to do.”

NBN chair defends $77m bonus bonanza during COVID-19 recession

NBN Co chairman Ziggy Switkowski has defended paying almost $80 million in bonuses during the second half of 2020 despite the impact of the COVID-19 recession.

In a terse round of questioning from Labor at Senate estimates on Friday morning, Mr Switowski said $78 million worth of bonuses – including $4.3 million for executives – were deserved because the company stepped up to the plate during the crisis.

“The public interest in my view was always that the network be built, available, reliable, resilient and could be counted upon,” Mr Switowski, a former Telstra executive, told the hearing.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to say well, ‘that doesn’t matter, we’re in a COVID environment and therefore everybody should have some modification to their bonuses’.”

The publicly owned broadband company was criticised in February when it revealed its staff bonus bill for July-December 2020 in answers to questions on notice tabled in the Senate.

The bonuses were about 75 per cent higher than paid in the previous financial year, including more than $73.2 million in payments for the company’s more than 6000 staff.

After learning about the bonuses, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said his office contacted NBN to “remind them” to inform the government about bonuses before they’re paid.

But on Friday Mr Switkowski was unable to recall such a conversation with the Minister.