Weekly Wrap 443: A cat, a podcast, and words on healthcare

My week of Monday 19 to Sunday 25 November 2018 was dominated by a grumpy cat, but I won’t go into that.

Podcasts

  • “The 9pm Arch Window of the Baked Goods”, being The 9pm Edict episode 81. It’s also on Spreaker and SoundCloud. My guest co-host was Nicholas Fryer. Please let me know if you like this format. We’ll be doing a second one before Christmas, and I may do another episode or two in different formats before the end of the year.

Articles

I also wrote a piece about the Assistance and Access Bill, which will appear on Monday.

Media Appearances, Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

The week will be dominated by action in the Australian Parliament, namely debate over the controversial anti-encryption legislation, the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018.

The powerful Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) is still conducting hearings as part of its inquiry, but home affair minister Peter Dutton is pressuring the committee to hurry up, and prime minister Scott Morrison has said he wants the legislation passed in the next two weeks.

Hearings are now scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, and Friday this week. I’m writing some analysis for ZDNet for Monday, and we’ll see what happens after that.

Meanwhile, I’ll be in Sydney on Tuesday for a lunchtime briefing on “Countering Advanced Threats” by Cybereason, and on Friday for a media lunch with executives from Symantec.

Further Ahead

There don’t seem to be any major commitments between now and Christmas, just some single-day or overnight trips to Sydney for media briefings, end-of-year events, and social activities.

There will be at least one episode of The 9pm Edict wth Nicholas Fryer, however, and perhaps one that’s more of a long-form interview.

[Photo: Freelancer Life. Watching the Australian Senate live while grabbing a late breakfast of noodle soup at the Sussex Centre food court in Sydney’s Chinatown, photographed on 14 November 2018. So not this week.]

Weekly Wrap 415: Invisible tasks, and some cold weather

Waratah in the SnowMy week of Monday 7 Sunday 13 May 2018 was one of those odd weeks when almost nothing productive emerged into the public gaze. I was in fact reasonably productive, but it was all behind the scenes.

This Weekly Wrap is therefore rather brief.

To pad it out, I’ll mention that Thursday was unreasonably cold, with snow at Orange in the west of NSW, and a few flakes were even seen at Wentworth Falls. This gives me an excuse — albeit a poor one — to run my photo of a waratah (the flower) in snow at Bunjaree Cottages on 12 October 2012.

REMINDER: The 9pm Brisbane Forum Pozible campaign is still running. There’s just five days left, and it’s only 19% of the way to its target. Please consider.

Articles, Podcasts, Media Appearances, Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

This week continues to see me based in Ashfield, Sydney, working through the Crikey project, and writing for ZDNet much as usual.

On Thursday, the next episode of The 9pm Edict, will be recorded and streamed live at 2100 AEST.

Further Ahead

Things I’ve pencilled in: