Russell Brand, Tony Abbott and Dan Andrews (Images: AAP/Private Media)

Abbott to get Hastie The reciprocal gestures between former prime minister Tony Abbott and onward Christian soldier/MP for Canning Andrew Hastie continue. Hastie has contacted his mailing list, passing on an “urgent message” from Abbott regarding the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Abbott’s missive is exactly as you’d expect, an apparently panic-stricken plea to Hastie’s supporters to volunteer for the No campaign (if they truly care about their country). “This is the most important communication you’ve ever had from me” before spitting out some disingenuous victim narrative, like the old master he is: “Do you want Australia to remain a country with ‘no hierarchy of descent’ and ‘no privilege of origin’. I sure do.”

Apart from all that, this must be one of the most redundant bits of cross-promotion we’ve ever seen. You may recall back in May 2020 when Abbott was a year out of Parliament, he just upped and handed over the email addresses he had to Hastie without seeking their permission, so… he would have had access to a big chunk of those readers he so urgently needed to reach, no? Not to mention this comes the same week Abbott gets even greater access to News Corp than he unofficially enjoyed for the past decade, with the announcement of his nomination to the board of Fox Corp.

Brand management What are we to do about Russell Brand? According to Australia’s streaming services, nothing too urgent. It’s been 10 days since the initial allegations of rape and abuse were levelled at the former comedian and current conspiracy-addled pseudo-intellectual, made public after an investigation by the Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches. Predictably, more have been raked to the surface. The Metropolitan Police said yesterday it would investigate fresh allegations of “non-recent” sexual offences.

A tipster has got in touch to point out that streaming services Stan (Rock of Ages), Disney (Death on the Nile) and Binge (Get Him to the Greek, Despicable Me 1-3) all still have Brand’s movies up. The tipster has emailed all of them to see what they’re going to do about it, and has received some profoundly carefully worded responses that weirdly shy around actually naming Brand. Binge promises it certainly understands “how the actor that plays on one of the movies shown in the platform would affect how the public views Binge as a whole”.

We can only sympathise with the Disney+ employees who have to start off every exchange with “thank you for reaching out to the magical kingdom of Disney+” at a time like this. The platform is similarly reticent about naming names, expressing sincere regret for what it calls “the (controversial actor issue)” in language that implies the platform had prepared for these kinds of messages, but… not that much?

In both cases, the issue has been passed on. At time of writing, the movies are all still there. Our tipster hasn’t heard back from Stan beyond an auto-reply. We’ll keep an eye on this and keep you posted.

Along similar lines, we note the official YouTube account of long-running variety show Saturday Night Live still has a series of clips available from Brand’s stint hosting in 2011 — though no clips featuring the musical guest, Chris Brown.

No Dan is an Island After nine extremely eventful years, a pithy summation of departing Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ time at the helm is tough. But for a portion of Australia’s progressives, he will have one undeniable and beautiful legacy — he’ll be the guy who finally put a bullet in the Herald Sun, at least in so far as it played a role in influencing politics in the state.

In the lead-up to the November 2022 state election the Hun fully and finally popped off the last rivets connecting it to reality and became a parody of the campaigning News Corp rag. The coverage dredged up a 2013 car accident his wife had been involved in and, most famously/embarrassingly, put a photo of a teensy staircase on its cover to allude to conspiracy theories concerning how Andrews had ended up suffering a serious back injury that put him out of commission for months. The pieces, attempting to cover for the lack of anything to actually report, landed foggy and surreal as a fever dream.

And so, here is how they sent off the great adversary:

We particularly like the contention that he leaves Victorians “divided” — by definition, any political leader must, and given the fact that Andrews, for all the problems of his reign, increased Labor’s vote each and everytime he ran, it would be interesting to hear what proportions of division the Hun had in mind.

OutFoxed Speaking of media being trapped by the conclusions they’ve chosen regardless of the facts they find: Fox News. In a recent segment Fox sent a reporter to the apparently bombed-out crime-riven dystopia of Seattle, reeling from the decriminalisation of drugs, and tried to find local victims of what it called a “progressive hellscape”. Just listen to these shocking testimonies:

It is extremely funny. Having been resolutely unable to find a single person who actually seemed bothered by any drug users, the segment producers hit upon a genius move, running these remarkably chirpy vox pops above the chyron “residents in blue cities embrace the decay”.