(Image: Private Media)(Image: Private Media)
(Image: Private Media)

Dear Prudence At certain points content slots so smoothly into Tips and Murmurs that there is nothing much we in the bunker can add. And so it was that the immaculately coiffured vehicular manslaughter enthusiast Prue MacSween came to track down one of her own tweets and refute it. Back in August 2018, the day before Scott Morrison was raised to the Prime Minister’s Office by the defenestration of the Turnbull government, MacSween tweeted that a victory for Morrison in the leadership ballot would be “the end” of the Liberal Party and that he was a “narcissist”.

Then, yesterday, for reasons science may never uncover, she tracked it down, and quote tweeted it, saying “This is bogus”.

NFT NFI “Anyone could own a virtual piece of the Great Barrier Reef under an ambitious plan to revolutionise charity-based conservation,” gushes the ABC, going on to document a plan to sell photo-realistic 3D models of hectares of the Great Barrier Reef to raise money for conservation. They are going to be — because this is the year 2022, and no one is allowed to go three sentences without saying this — non-fungible tokens (NFTs). I guess we can forgive a bit of “gee whiz by golly” reporting on this trendy tech thingy colliding with huge environmental issues afflicting a national icon.

But surely an editor working on this piece really ought to send the reporter back to ask a few questions, such as those relating to the controversy around the environmental impacts of crypto in general and NFTs in particular, and what contribution NFTs have on climate change — you know, that thing causing all this kerfuffle around the reef in the first place? Indeed it seems strange to write a whole piece about conservation and not mention pollution, the climate crisis or emissions at all.

Kean as mustard New South Wales Treasurer and Energy Minister Matt Kean has long been happy to cause headaches for his Liberal party colleagues, particularly at a federal level. On climate in particular he has departed from Scott Morrison’s preferred talking points since late 2019, when he explicitly linked the bush fires raging through his state to climate change. But even by his standards, this is pretty strong:

Responding to news that Senator Sarah Henderson is arguing for the Parenthood Project to be stripped of its charity status (because they aren’t sufficiently supportive of the Coalition’s policies), Kean was unimpressed: “Come on [Henderson], you’re better than this. We in NSW are working constructively with … [Parenthood] and other Non Gov outfits to help shape better policies for children, women & families. Why don’t you join us?”

Feral TV This is not the only Liberal Party campaign against a charity. The push against the OpenAustralia Foundation, the not-for-profit that runs the They Vote for You website, lead by NSW Senator Andrew Bragg and MP Dave Sharma, rumbles on. The pair are arguing the website’s catalogue of their voting histories “distorts” their position. For example, according to the website, Sharma, a “moderate” Liberal, has consistently voted against: a fast transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, increasing investment in renewable energy, federal government action on animal and plant extinctions, and so on.

There is, as pointed out to us by a tipster, an interesting Freudian slip in the letter Bragg’s representatives sent to OpenAustralia. The letter argues that it is misleading to argue Bragg has voted consistently against increasing Newstart Allowance, since he had only voted “no” on, among other things, motions critical of the “feral” government.

Then again, given the events of the past year, perhaps it’s less a mangling of the word federal, and more a simple statement of fact.