Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s commitment to tackling discrimination against women is being questioned, with the position of Sex Discrimination Commissioner left vacant for four months.
Elizabeth Broderick left the post in early September, but her departure was long expected after Attorney-General George Brandis extended her term by a year in 2014.
Senator Brandis told Parliament in early November, in response to Labor’s questions, that an announcement would be made “very soon”.
Other things No Award questions about Turnbull: his judgement; his friends (cf Dutton).
Does YA fiction need to check its privilege? On class, and the lack of working class YA protagonists who aren’t leading a revolution. (Liz agrees strongly with this article, and sadly notes that some of the worst depictions of class are from OzYA.)
An Open Letter to JJ Abrams – Did you know that girls can be Star Wars fans? Apparently JJ didn’t. But what made this blog post particularly enjoyable was the author’s account of becoming a science fiction fan in Hong Kong.
Great piece at Overland on the shit going on against the CFMEU and Australia’s Unions: Black bans and blackmail, and why it’s important.
That’s why having workers’ representatives monitoring safety matters. Last month, when a concrete slab crushed two men to death on an East Perth worksite, it transpired that the CFMEU had been refused entry to the site sixteen times.
No Award reminds everyone that the voices of women (and genderqueer people) are frequently silenced by the medical fraternity and endometriosis is a real thing suffered by Friends of No Award: My Doctors Said My Crippling Menstrual Pain Was “Fine”.
As Parkhill noted in a response to Kilbride’s piece on Facebook, the core issue was not simply that the piece was ‘garbage’, but that it passed the editorial process at all. ‘Perhaps worse than the article’s content is the fact that [New Matilda] have exposed a very young and inexperienced writer’s ill-formed thoughts to a large audience,’ Parkhill said. ‘This article was by no means ready to go live, and I’m sure in the fullness of time its author won’t thank [New Matilda] for the opportunity or “exposure” but will regret the fact that [they] were willing to publish such asinine crap to which his name will be forever attached.’
Seven News reported on Wednesday that police know the man, believed to be a former university student, responsible and found a second pig’s head in his home.
But he reportedly won’t be charged because technically no laws had been broken.
IT’S CALLED RACIAL VILIFICATION GET IT TOGETHER WA COPPERS COME ON.
“When I came on this trip, there were a lot of things I hadn’t done at home,” said Rose, 32, from Western Australia.
“There was a bucket list and I always said that if I came to Colombia I would try cocaine.
“In Australia, it is a rich man’s drug and sells for about $300 a gram. Here we have had it for as cheap as $US5. People give it away because it is so accessible.”
Ms Mariah Carey has been dating a man who is beneath her for some time now. (Not for the first time! Probs not for the last! Spoilers: most men are unworthy of Mariah.)
Last week No Award encountered the rumour that she had left her own place to move into his subpar mansion. Although Mariah has since denied these claims, it took us to a great place: the idea of Mariah moving into the Lodge.
Hello, Friends! Just a quick little thing today about International Aid, Voluntourism, and You, where You is defined as an Australian of comparative affluence.
Australians are always losing their Prime Ministers. Into the Bass Strait, in the Liberal Party Party Room, in the audience of a Keating! performance. To assist the nation, No Award has compiled a list of places you might look if you’ve recently lost your Australian Prime Minister.
In all practical terms, this isn’t much of a change. Turnbull may believe in climate change and marriage equality, but there’s no sign he’s actually going to pursue any changes to Liberal policies there. In his first press conference this morning, he declared his commitment to mandatory detention for asylum seekers, so the change of prime minister just puts a new face on the same old human rights violations.
LUCKILY, Australians are good at finding the lighter side of a political backstabbing, and many memes and lols were had. No Award brings you some bits they most enjoyed/most noted. Mostly memes and hilarious rants.
Friend of No Award Ashleigh would like it noted:
Please document my very strong feelings about not giving a fuck about how this might make it harder for labor to win because stacking the deck for the future isn’t a valid argument to let someone fuck everything up for another year
No Award in fact had already adopted this exact sentiment as official No Award policy.
The politician Steph aspires to be, Penny Wong (queer, Malaysian-Chinese, left, yells in public) cuts Joe Hockey so decisively.
The Coalition party room voted not to allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage. Tony Abbott has suggested it be put to a popular vote, or maybe a referendum, or maybe a plebiscite, terrifyingly demonstrating that some of our federal politicians don’t understand how our political system actually works.
Liberal Senator Eric Abetz suggested that because Dolce and Gabbana had never married, same-sex couples had no need of marriage.
Liz asks: Is it possible that Tony Abbott just likes onions? Is that a bad thing? Should we as a nation be food shaming him for his unusual tastes when there are so many other weird and terrible things he does? Is it just that it’s quite funny to watch someone eat a whole raw onion, French or otherwise?
An Asylum seeker who is married to an Australian PR was removed from her husband (and the centre in Brisbane where she was living, and the school where she was studying to receive her HSC) and is currently in a Darwin detention centre.
The state of Victoria’s new government logo looks like a map of Tasmania. In every possible sense.
Steph says: I know how white person names work. This man has a fake name.
Someone suggested that Indigenous Australians were making booze out of vegemite and so vegemite should be banned in remote Indigenous communities. Vegemite watch began, but has since been retracted.
Steph says: no. Also call them Daesh, cos it makes ISIS mad to be delegitimised in this way and cos actual Middle-Eastern people have suggested we do so – the Western media is the only media who calls them ISIS.
Australia’s politicians come together with respect and honesty over this important issue. #kerning#auspol
Mr Raff said body corporate and property owners were footing bills of between $800-$1000 for the installation of cameras down drains in unit housing to determine who is responsible for clogging drains, should the problem arise.
Cameras to look at who is flushing wet wipes! We hope the cameras are in the drains, not in the bathrooms.
Netball: The sport America invented, then lost. Liz has a lot of complicated feelings about netball, mostly because it was compulsory for girls at her primary school, and the teachers just assumed everyone knew the rules. Plus, she was tall (yes, really!) and much better at basketball. However, netball as a cultural artifact is really interesting!
(MONA is not a great place to visit if you are asexual, have triggers relating to graphic depictions of rape, or have issues around cruelty to animals. I mention this because it didn’t come up in any of my pre-trip reading, and I personally would have liked some warning. Also, I can’t figure out why people were upset about the blunt knife in this piece, when the real issue is that the bowl is too shallow and the fish are hanging out in their own excrement.)
On the upside, I have yet to produce a museum review as terrible as this one.
Huw Parkinson of the ABC has found his calling: Australian politics and pop culture mash-ups. The only aspect of this Bronwyn-Bishop-as-Lucille-Bluth clip is that Tony Abbott isn’t Gob.
On a related note, Friend of No Award Ash has drawn our attention to a highlight of Bishop’s Wikipedia page:
Bishop was educated at Roseville Public School, completing her primary education in 1954. Bishop undertook a five-year LL.B. program at the University of Sydney. However, she was deemed ineligible to continue after failing a number of subjects multiple times. Bishop failed a total of 11 subjects over six years. In her first year in 1960, she failed all four core subjects. In 1964, she failed four subjects again and repeated them in 1965, in which she failed three again. The policy of the University of Sydney at the time was that a student was required to show cause why they should be allowed to repeat a subject for a third time, and Bishop was deemed ineligible to continue.
…Bishop first worked as an articled clerk and played an acting role as a barrister in the 1960s Australian television program Divorce Court.
Finally, Liz had one ongoing problem in Tasmania: the underwire of her bra kept popping out and trying to stab her. But Google has provided a solution! (No, it’s not “don’t wear bras without underwires”. They don’t exist in my size, and aside from the occasional stabbing, I prefer the support that comes with a bit of metal in one’s undergarments.)
This link has “borrowed” content and gender essentialism, but it also has more useful illustrations than the original source: How To Repair An Underwire Bra, featuring cheap corn/bunion pads.
Loretta Young has been excoriated for decades for presenting herself as a moralist while raising Clark Cable’s secret love child. Anne Helen Petersen uncovers the sadder, darker story behind the rumours.
It was in 1998 — in the wake of Judy’s memoir — that Young, by then in her eighties, first heard the term “date rape” on Larry King Live, at home in Palm Springs with Ed Funk. “She asked me what that meant and I explained to the best of my ability,” Funk told me.
…“And there was this whole dawning,” Linda said. …She said, ‘That — that’s what happened to me.’”
Steph isn’t sure what’s happening here: Skip Showers for Beef (please note that all figures appear to be in USA measurements, ie, weird shit like ounces.).
(As always, No Award recommends 4 minute shower timers, and also civil disobedience).
Actual discrimination against a ginger! (Not really, but the phrase “not sick, just Scottish” will live in Liz’s ginger-haired Anglo-Celtic heart forever.) (Steph notes this is what our dystopias will be: the brown morass discriminating against pale people for obviously being deficient. So great. So exciting.)
If you, too, enjoy filling your kitchen with completely useless and ridiculous appliances, The Guardian’s Inspect A Gadget feature is for you.
While preparation of leaf tea is traditionally a ritualised communion with ideas of elegance and solemnity, there’s always room for novelty pants.
Ian the Climate Change Denialist Potato is just looking out for you on behalf of our Prime Minister, Australia. Wind Farms are ugly, noisy beasts. They give you a headache, they take away sleep, they cause fan death on a national scale, and of course they pollute the air and clutter up the landscape with, like, all the fumes they exude and shit.
Be grateful we have a Prime Minister who, despite being conservative, is deeply into state control of the public interest. We’re a better nation for it.
Australians are always losing their Prime Ministers. Into the Bass Strait, in the Liberal Party Party Room, in the audience of a Keating! performance. To assist the nation, No Award has compiled a list of places you might look if you’ve recently lost your Australian Prime Minister.
no-award.net 
