Strewth: On the plus side

Wearing the face of a man who has been warned about the possibility of a dung sandwich but has just been confronted with an entire smorgasbord*, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin ambled out to explain how one of his troops had managed to illegally access a journalist’s phone records. But it wasn’t all bad. Yes, the new data retention regime had pretty much cracked when and where it was predicted, but Colvin managed to utter the following words with a straight face: “The public should have full confidence in this policy.” Bravo! Incidentally, one media outlet — let’s call it The Guardian Australia — accidentally named the AFP Commissioner as Mark Colvin; given the ABC broadcaster has long been a staunch defender of journalists’ metadata privacy rights, an industrial quantity of smelling salts has been sent his way. Strewth looks forward to seeing him back on his feet. (*He still looked cheerier than Resources Minister Matthew Canavan in the wake of Westpac’s Adani decision.)

Cutting to the chase

Optimist of the day award goes to 3AW’s Neil Mitchell.

Mitchell: “To cut through it all … can you promise Greta and the others that their gas bills will come down?”

Malcolm Turnbull: “Neil, I’m not going to promise, make a promise like that to Greta. What I can say to you is this — and this is important to get beyond the glib, the one-off lines — what we have seen, and I can explain how this happened …”

Mitchell: “I don’t want glib but she wants an answer.”

But is it art?

Over at Aunty, they’re also searching for a solution: “Are you an experienced journalist, a master at content planning and interested in covering issues across regional Australia. ABC Regional is on the hunt for a senior producer to join their team. As senior producer you will subedit, publish and distribute digital content.” Furthermore: “A self-starter you will … have high level subediting skills, an eye for detail …” So we were touched to see that the top of the ad specified the job involved a “Ballart location”. Sadly, it was eventually corrected to “Ballarat”, but for a while we clung to the frankly avant-garde idea of something called “ballart”. It would surely involve — how shall we put it? — a particularly tricky canvas.

In need of the Bish

Some perspective from Macedonia, via Radio Free Europe: “About 200 protesters have stormed into Macedonia’s parliament building and beaten leading lawmakers after an alliance of Social Democrats and ethnic Albanian parties approved a new Speaker of parliament.” If former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop gets bored of Sky News, she could always offer her services.

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