withdrawing super unemployed
(Image: AAP/Dan Peled)

Jog on, Jongen We have to give Services Australia general manager Hank Jongen full marks for lateral thinking. With half of Australia in lockdown and huge numbers of people struggling to access support from a system allegedly riddled with tech issues, Jongen had a novel suggestion: it’s all a trick of the light. It’s not that there are more people needing help, he suggested, it’s merely that the lines outside Centrelink office looked longer — because of social distancing, you see.

“This may result in a noticeable queue in some locations, however this does not mean we’re dealing with increased demand in our service centres,” he said. Genius.

The Canavan moves on There is surely no better way to show that unfounded criticism hasn’t bothered you in the least than posting a long Twitter thread in response. After Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese noted the “pristine” condition of work tools behind LNP Senator Matt Canavan in a recent interview, Canavan replied: “Nice to know that I am living rent-free in Anthony Albanese’s mind … ” This was followed by a series of photos of tools that, look, did appear to have been used.

We can’t believe anyone would suggest Canavan — whose pre-politics career was hopping from the Productivity Commission to KPMG to Barnaby Joyce’s chief of staff and whose Twitter pic is him in high-vis with coal dust smeared on his face — might give an inaccurate image of himself as a rugged man of the soil?

Jump! Go ahead, jump If you’ve come to suspect that life in the last 18 months is just a diminishing version of what it once was — reality photocopied down to white — you aren’t alone. See the announcement of the 2032 Olympics winner, which everyone knew would be Brisbane. The bizarre charade of various figures’ surprise at winning this race of one is the equivalent of that time I impressed my parents by bringing home a second place ribbon from an event at my year seven swimming carnival in which I had represented 50% of the participants.

Compare it to the 1993 announcement of Sydney’s successful bid. Even Palaszczuk’s attempt to mimic then-NSW premier John Fahey’s leap of joy only called attention to the comparatively miserable present.

I’ll get me Coates Incidentally, the exchange between Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates and Palaszczuk regarding the premier’s attendance at the Tokyo opening ceremony is so uncomfortable, it may strain whichever muscles are engaged by wincing:

You are going to the opening ceremony. I’m still the deputy chair of the candidature leadership group and … none of you are staying behind and hiding in your rooms, alright?

Apart from anything else, can you imagine he would have said this if he was talking to a bloke?

“People like Coldplay and voting for the Nazis, you can’t trust people” Remember when Winston Marshall quit twee waistcoat-sporting folk rockers Mumford & Sons on account of his enjoyment of serially discredited far-right grifter/provocateur Andy Ngo, and we thought that was the worst thing drippy Brit-rockers were going to do this year? Turns out we were wrong.

Coldplay — the music that “makes you feel sad enough to want a chocolate but not to actually kill yourself” — is putting an album out called (Jesus Christ…) Music of the Spheres, and the names of half the tracks are emojis.