Banned protester Tash Peterson, pictured right (Image: AAP/Private Media)

Incarceration of speech From Western Australia comes an example of the creative and innovative approaches governments around the country use to crack down on dissent. Controversial vegan protester Tash Peterson — who has been known to use confrontational protests involving nudity and blood to get her point across — has been banned from all licensed restaurants, bars, nightclubs, pubs, licensed events and liquor stores in the state.

The Liquor Control Act, which has the power to ban someone from every licensed venue in Western Australia, was sold in a way to keep violent offenders out of pubs, not punish protesters. Not to worry, though: thanks to the lack of a human rights act in WA, there’s pretty much sod all she — or you, or I — can do about it!

A gift that keeps on giving We in the bunker will always give credit to a decent sense of humour. Former BuzzFeed narc Mark Di Stefano is on his way back to Australia, taking up a tech reporter role with The Australian Financial Review. As we’ve noted, Di Stefano is a popular guy, and a tipster has sent us a screenshot of an Instagram story showing the thoughtful gifts his friends got him at what appears to be a going-away bash:

Back in 2020 Di Stefano resigned from the UK’s Financial Times after it was found that he had spied on a meeting in which several reporters for The Independent and the Evening Standard found out they were being furloughed and/or facing pay cuts. And fair play to him, he’s looking into ways of improving — one of the gifts he’s seen proudly holding is the “well-regarded, student-friendly” textbook The Ethical Journalist: Making Responsible Decisions in the Digital Age.

Return to Splendour It was almost impressive how resolutely Splendour in the Grass this year avoided fulfilling either the “Splendour” or “Grass” parts of its name. With thanks to tipsters/hipsters on the ground and workers in various medical and service capacities, we’ve got the following insight into just how grim things got, via “things overheard at Splendour”:

  • “I was having a mental breakdown last night but I’m feeling a bit better this morning …”
  • “Bloody flipping flop!” (one of the many people who needed the medical tent to look at a mud-sustained foot injury, doing his best not to swear through his agony thanks to the proliferation of signs warning against abusive behaviour)
  • “Last time on the bus to Splendour someone threw up on me”
  • “It’s like a refugee detention centre”
  • “I have a feeling there’s dirt in my gyros but I don’t know if it’s from my hands”
  • “Welcome to hell”

On the Fitz Bandana enthusiast and gleeful language mangler Peter FitzSimons is a prolifically published historian — as anyone who has been to an airport or has an uncle who is extremely easy to buy gifts for will know. So it’s quite something to witness him excavating hidden gems in full view. We got a glimpse of this process on Sunday afternoon when FitzSimons stumbled across, for the first time, a little cultural theory called the Bechdel Test:

FitzSimons, whose publishers claim with some credibility is Australia’s bestselling non-fiction author, is describing a theory that was first posited by feminist alt-cartoonist Alison Bechdel in the mid-1980s. But of course, I don’t need to tell you that, because since then it has become one of the most ubiquitous filters through which a piece of narrative culture may be assessed, subject to countless critiques and derivatives, all of which FitzSimons has somehow missed. Anyway, Peter, we look forward to hearing about your “problematic faves” and which characters you are “shipping” and whatever else you’ve learnt from the Tumblr account you appear to have travelled back to 2013 to start.