Unlimited

Lake Illawara. The Ski Park. 

Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify. The good artist is a vehicle of truth, he formulates ideas which would otherwise remain vague and focuses attention upon facts which can then no longer be ignored. The tyrant persecutes the artist by silencing him or by attempting to degrade or buy him. This has always been so.

Iris Murdoch.


The scaffolding collapsed far out to sea.
Constantly, he could see those glistening flanks disappearing into the waves.
A societal anagram, perhaps. The continental border, or the border of the real, giving away.
Beyond the horizon, always.
Ethereal, these contretemps.
And then they were away.
Experts at disguise, they could slither inside host populations, disappearing through bellies into beating flesh.
But visible or not, it was obvious things were not the same.
However beautiful these wild, forlorn, epoch changing events, there would be hell to pay.
It was not love, although he could hear them whisper constantly, I love you, we love you. But he had been too long at sea to trust them.
"I am the World Counselor," another declared.
And that was the exact point when he flung himself into the depths.
For there was nothing that could make him trust them, nothing at all.

THE BIGGER STORY:

The Department of Home Affairs sought to exclude Manus Island security contractor Paladin from Freedom of Information laws, while allowing it to sit outside the usual government procurement guidelines, raising further questions about the awarding of $423 million in Commonwealth contracts.

A draft of Paladin's "PNG Services Contract", provided to the Senate by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, shows department lawyers crossed out obligations for Paladin to comply with FOI legislation. The exclusion was reversed and the FOI reference was in the final contract, but any obligation for Paladin to comply with "Commonwealth Procurement Rules" was left out.

In a series of reports over recent days The Australian Financial Review has revealed Paladin was awarded the contracts after closed tenders and that one of its principles, Craig Thrupp, had left a string of failed contracts and bad debts across Asia.

The total value of Paladin's contracts exceeds that paid to top-tier consulting firms, such as Ernst & Young, while the daily cost per detainee of the service is more than double the rate for a suite in a five-star hotel with views of Sydney Harbour.

The Manus contracts released by Mr Dutton are heavily redacted and he denied requests for further information on the grounds it would harm relations with Papua New Guinea.

The collapse of the Isis caliphate’s last stronghold in Syria is sending shock waves across the region, changing the calculations of the major powers as they jockey for advantage. Triumphalism in Washington, Moscow and Damascus risks obscuring the human cost of a “victory” that may quickly prove transitory.

Of immediate concern is the fate of civilians, mainly women and children, displaced from formerly Isis-controlled areas where many were held against their will. The independent International Rescue Committee says up to 4,000 people are fleeing towards the al-Hawl refugee camp in north-east Syria.