From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

How to get rid of a statue. Just like that, the country is busy arguing over whether or not we should get rid of statues of our our colonial ancestors, change their plaques or leave them up unchanged. One of the statues under fire in the culture war is that of founder of Melbourne John Batman — artist Ben Quilty says that since as “a bounty hunter in Tasmania he killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of people” means his statue should be taken down from the car park where it stands (it is not clear where that car park is).

The statue stood on the corner of William and Collins streets in Melbourne since 1979, but it was fairly uncontroversially removed within the last year — the site (across the road from the Crikey bunker) is being redeveloped into a fancy new skyscraper. 

We liked this set of photos from a Facebook page set up to track the efforts to protect Melbourne’s heritage buildings — going, going, gone. The Melbourne Heritage Action page says the statue was surrounded by the demolition of the old National Mutual building, then hidden by the fences, and now there is nothing but a giant pit. 

Perhaps the most effective way to get rid of a statue isn’t through culture wars, but just property development.

A significant day. Today is International Day Against Nuclear Tests — perhaps no one told North Korea.

The day Malcolm Turnbull didn’t like some foreign investment. As a spruiker for the big company tax cuts he wants to give to large companies, the Prime Minister has argued that Australia needs to be a more attractive investment destination, particularly when Donald Trump is pushing to cut the US company tax rate. But there seem to be some types of foreign investment that Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t welcome. Yesterday, Turnbull attacked Bill Shorten for Labor’s continued opposition to changes to media ownership laws in light of US giant CBS moving to acquire the Ten Network.

“What Bill Shorten is doing by opposing these reforms is he’s guaranteeing that foreign-owned media companies will continue to be able to advance at the expense of the Australian businesses.” Apparently we don’t want foreign investment now. Perhaps Turnbull was simply annoyed that, for once, laws to protect media diversity literally protected media diversity — the entry of foreign media company with no pre-existing presence in the Australian market will actually enhance the diversity of voices in the Australian media market. And what was the alternative, Prime Minister? News Corp acquiring the Ten Network? News Corp’s a foreign company as well. Why is advancing the foreign-owned media company controlled by the Murdoch family OK, but advancing the foreign-owned media company controlled by the Redstone family not OK? Maybe Turnbull thinks News Corp owning Ten wouldn’t be as bad because Bruce Gordon would also have owned a substantial stake. Bruce Gordon might be Australian — but where does he live? Bermuda. Damn foreigners.

Who am I? 24601! Back in 2003, having served 11 weeks of a three-year prison sentence for electoral fraud, Pauline Hanson was philosophical about what led people to end up in prison and the toll incarceration took on people. At a doorstop interview upon her release, Hanson had this to say:

“The message that I’d like to say is — I got caught up in the system that I saw fail me and I just, I am so concerned now for the other women behind the bars here — and men — that have also seen the system fail them and that’s my biggest concern … The system let me down like it’s let a lot of people down. And there are other girls in there that the system has let down. And it’s only because of money, power and position that stops them from getting their freedom.”

By 2015, Hanson, talking to author and filmmaker Anna Broinowski (in an excerpt of her book, just published by The Guardian), had slightly changed her tune on the failures of the system when it comes to prisoners rights.  As it turns out, prison is really quite nice: 

“You have air conditioning, a clean cell, hot meals, access to education, a gym instructor, so many benefits. Hang on a minute, they’ve committed a crime against society! And I thought of the elderly. Where’s their heating, their air conditioning? What about the homeless? They don’t have a roof over their heads and three square meals a day!”

Perhaps her reflections on the comforts of prison account for the precisely zero policies One Nation has on prison conditions or prisoners’ rights, as previously observed by Crikey.

Potato, potahto. For a short time yesterday, lazy researchers might have been alarmed to find Wikipedia’s description of Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s early years and background. According to his page, he was created in a laboratory, acquired a taste for human blood while working as a cop with Queensland Police, and once had a job at Circus Oz: “his robot-clown character enjoyed playing with matches and poking himself with a beer bottle in the eyes until one would fall out. This performance proved alarming to most casual circus goers, and he was quietly let go.”

The description was corrected, but his headshot as a potato remained on the website into the evening.

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