Hanson my heart … Guy’s BBF is COS … the kids are (not) alright

Pauline’s youth In news that surely won’t ever form the basis of an ominous voiceover in a future documentary, we noticed that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation appears to have registered a youth wing.

The wing was registered in early 2020, yet we can’t find anything else on it apart from a report on Western Australian youth news network WAMN News. There is a Facebook page claiming to be for “Pauline Hanson’s Young Nation”, but… reading through the posts, we get the sense that one might be an unrelated pisstake:

Hanson is attempting to cudgel her way back into the public eye with her fight against an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and her eloquent views on Balinese cattle raising — is the youth wing soon to mobilise? Know more about PHON’s young members? Let us know.

What a Guy This pathetic interstate rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney goes too far sometimes. We’ve listed at length the credentials of the Victorian Liberals branch as potentially the most dysfunctional opposition party in the country, but then the New South Wales branch goes on a run of its own of uninterrupted chaos, disaster and apparent corruption.

So Victorian Liberal Leader Matthew Guy’s response to the saga of former deputy premier John Barilaro’s appointment to a flush New York gig post-politics — a scandal that has billowed out and engulfed NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, former deputy premier Stuart Ayers, and Police Minister David Elliott — is frankly a little underwhelming.

The appointment of Guy’s childhood friend and best man Nick McGowan as his chief of staff is the Their Satanic Majesties Request of state-based political scandal — decent enough in its own right, but not impressing anyone a few months after Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club comes out.

Hot take The Australian media landscape is such that every publication has its own highly distinct brand of weird/awful take. If there’s a piece making everyone mad, you only need a brief synopsis to know instantly where it was published. Trying to making sense of “my actually pretty young dad would happily give his life if it mean the shops could open again”? You’re reading The Australian Financial Review, buddy! “Australia’s kids would never defend her, on account of the woke mid virus” is pretty much guaranteed to be The Australian, and “COVID taught me I’m more than my haircut” couldn’t happen anywhere but Guardian Australia.

The Nine papers’ version of this must surely be “Stop being so nice to your kids, you fucking moron”. Kate Halfpenny, who doesn’t leave much out of her job description by running a company called “Bad Mother Media”, thinks we coddle our kids too much, encouraging her readers to make more jokes at their expense and not give in to their incessant braying for more fondue (who can forget those starry-eyed days of youth when all you could dream about was fondue?). And sure, raising kids who aren’t entitled or humourless is a good aim — and frankly we have to give her credit for not omitting details that some might see as a drawback to her approach:

The school called to say Jack had hurt his knee and I needed to fetch him. No way, I said. He’s used his golden ticket. Put him on the train later. He ended up having surgery on a knee his surgeon described as ‘stuffed’.