Good feud guide. The Australian’s culture war target today is Osman Faruqi: “Former Greens staffer and candidate”, as The Oz described him in the lede and headline. The topic: Faruqi’s new job at the ABC working on a new lifestyle part of its website (somewhat further down there was acknowledgement of his most recent and relevant experience as news and politics editor at Junkee).

In an odd mistake, the piece published overnight and in the paper described Faruqi as supporting Catherine Deveny’s Anzac Day tweet by “retweeting” it, without acknowledging his retweet was criticising Deveny.

The Oz has now added an editor’s note to the online version and apologised for the mistake. Predictably, Senator Eric Abetz has jumped in with an informed opinion, issuing a statement this morning demanding the ABC reconsider “Oscan Faruqi’s” appointment, given his “extremist left political pedigree” and “propensity to push fake news”.

The ABC announced earlier this week it would be cutting senior journalist jobs to make way for more digital roles in its capital city newsrooms.

2018 produces most-complained about ads. This year has already produced the two most complained about ads of the last decade. The Advertising Standards Bureau yesterday released a list of the ads that had attracted the most complaints since 1998.

The top two were: a Sportsbet ad showing a man naked from the waist up, apparently “manscaping”, which attracted 792 complaints (upheld because it didn’t treat sex, sexuality and nudity with sensitivity); and an iSelect ad that showed a woman aggressively hitting a pinata in front of children, which was also upheld after 715 complaints.

Those ads topped the previous most-complained about ad, a 2014 Ashley Madison ad that showed men singing about looking for women other than their wives, which had 643 complaints.

Sunrise ditched by US band. Portugul. The Man, a US rock band, has ditched a scheduled appearance on Seven’s Sunrise because of the program’s error-filled segment about the Stolen Generations in March. The band posted on Twitter yesterday to say it had cancelled the appearance: “While we are by no means experts in your countries [sic] history we know there are problems that, like ours, are yet to be resolved and only being amplified by the recent statements on Sunrise.“

Front page of the day.

Mauuuuuurice. Chinese investment in the Pacific has brought to the surface some ugly attitudes and questionable assumptions, but it’s all very complicated. Can someone synthesise the stupid in one place? Yes it’s Mauuuuuuurice Newman! Sing it space cowboy! What does this former banker think of small nations seeking development investment from much larger ones?

Right under Canberra’s nose, [Chinese premier] Xi has effectively colonised the region that was once Australia’s sphere of influence … Vanuatu, among many South Pacific nations, is struggling under China’s debt load. But this simply strengthens Beijing’s grip.

As in, “the ANZ has colonised my house with the mortgage I sought from them”. Let’s be clear. Pacific and African nations turn to China for investment not just because they are offering big money, not just because China builds real infrastructure for its projects, rather than shonky tenders by megacorps, but also because there is a fellow-feeling with a non-European people. Because we actually did, non-metaphorically colonise those peoples, ripped them off blind, and left them with very little.

Furthermore, they can also see that we lock up non-white people in desert prisons — and then roll out the welcome mat to white farmers whose prosperity was gained through a racist system in the first place. Furrrrrthermore, mandatory detention is simply a continuation of Australian colonialism in the Pacific; we owned Nauru and New Guinea, and they’re the places we dump detainees.

As to a banker’s sudden concern about indebtedness, funny how that’s suddenly an issue when white people don’t hold the deeds to brown people’s lives, ain’t it. As I say, the most succinct statement on China in the Pacific from the enlarged-prostate right you’re likely to see. Very spacey space cowboy this week. — Guy Rundle

Glenn Dyer’s TV Ratings. MKR is heading towards the end and the audience last night rose nicely to average 1.81 million nationally and led Seven to a win in the night (and some very tasty demos). The Voice held in for Nine and averaged a solid 1.45 million nationally (and some yummy demos). And that was the night. Ten’s The Project at 7pm picked up sharply to average 809,000 nationally, 11th most watched across the country.

In regional areas Seven News won with 631,000 viewers, over MKR with 583,000, Seven News/Today tonight with 544,000, then The Voice with 449,000 and Home and Away with 447,000. Read the rest on the Crikey website.