Turnbull showdown with Abbott: firearm metaphors prove tricky

Meanwhile, real activism means facing the power structures in the back of a paddy wagon

Trigger warning. The Sydney Morning Herald’s splash headline, October 21:

Abbott hurt in gunfight with Turnbull

Bad taste. The SMH’s Paul McGeough on Donald Trump’s scatter-gun language, August:

There have been enough political assassinations in the US to make chirpy or even oblique allusions to death on the campaign trail the worst of bad taste. So when Donald Trump went there at a rally on Tuesday, it was a sinister moment in a campaign already replete with ugly moments.

Snouts buried in the metaphor trough. Jacqueline Maley in the SMH, Friday:

Pigs, and specifically the right to kill them with rapid-fire shotguns, this week took an unlikely turn in the national spotlight, when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull seemed to prevaricate on whether the government would keep the current ban on the controversial Adler shotgun. Farmers and some members of the Nationals party room say the Adler is an effective feral pig killing machine ... This is not the first time the porcine has become political. During the kinder, gentler polity of 2014, when Abbott was prime minister and Turnbull his communications minister, it was a different kind of pig that became an overnight political talking point, and a different Turnbull who came to the pig’s rescue. Peppa Pig, the cartoon pig beloved by Australian preschoolers, looked to be threatened by budget cuts to the ABC, which broadcasts her eponymous show.

Cutting edge polemics on display? Van Badham on the Guardian Australia, October 21:

It’s quite an ask of the Australian people to demand we be terrified of a woman in a chiffon orange blouse who can’t even bring herself to call her enemies “dinosaurs” while she argues “love is love” on the television. But the Turnbull government is so desperate for villains to distract the Australian people from its ongoing policy failures, internal ructions and dwindling popularity that the former nurse, grandmother and blouse-wearer Ged Kearney — appearing on this week’s Q&A in her role as the president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions — will have to do.

You, too, can write like this. The Guardian Australia:

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A love letter to activism. Amanda Meade in The Guardian Australia, Friday:

The award-winning academic, journalist and activist Prof Wendy Bacon has been arrested after protesting the construction of Sydney’s WestConnex road project ... The 69-year-old journalism academic was put in the back of a New South Wales police paddy wagon ...

Lovely stuff, but what about the mandatory reference to power structures? Meade dives in to Bacon’s blog:

“ ... I want my journalism to be useful to those who resist abuses of power and seek social justice rather than supporting existing power structures, which is what most journalism does. My emphasis is on information that I hope will empower people to take action.” Newtown police confirmed that Bacon was in custody and was assisting with their inquiries.

University of Technology, Sydney, website:

Wendy Bacon is a Professorial Fellow attached to the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.