Editors: Black Gold

- When releasing a best-of compilation there are two main routes you can go down with the tracking: order them so it sounds like a hit-laden studio album, or order them chronologically to showcase the band’s evolution with time. Now that, after fifteen years of releasing music, English post-punk-turned-something-else band Editors have decided to release a best of and so are made to choose one of these paths.

Regurgitator Quarter Pounder Celebration - Sunday 27th October @ The Tivoli

It’s 3:20pm on a Sunday arvo at the Tivoli. Vicious punk rock emanates through the walls. Making my way to the stage expecting to see dudes on stage in rock attire, it was more than impressive to discover three bad-ass bitches from the backyards of Brisbane instead. Welcome, Koko Uzi. Bassist and vocalist Lisa is transcendent in her delivery.

Hans Zimmer at Brisbane Entertainment Centre

If you’re a fan of Christopher Nolan, Pirates of the Caribbean or superhero movies, you shouldn’t need much introduction to the work of German film composer Hans Zimmer. Since the 80s, he’s raked up a staggering 150 film compositions and is considered one of cinema’s finest modern composers.

At the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on October 3rd, Zimmer was already commanding an audience as I sat in congested traffic, sweaty-palmed and trying to find a park. Luckily, I was saved by a ten-minute delayed start time!

NSW schools have $1.3billion in unspent funds

New South Wales public schools are failing to spend $1.3 billion of funds accumulated from NSW and federal governments, and from fundraising by schools and parents.

New figures show that that each school has $600,000 of unspent money. 

The NSW Teachers Federation and Greens MP David Shoebridge says principals are not receiving the right support to spend the money allocated to their schools, and they feel they are expected to be financial managers as well as educators.

First Peoples’ Assembly elected in Vic

Twenty-one elected members to the First Peoples’ Assembly, a group charged with being the voice of Indigenous Victorians during the Victoria Treaty process, have now been announced.

Treaties between Indigenous people and governments will essentially act as contracts, and can be used to acknowledge sacred sites, names, historic sovereignty and historical wrongs.

Mary River saved from erosion

The badly eroded Mary River on Mount Ubi Station at Kenilworth, whose sediment flows into the Great Barrier Reef, has been transformed with the help of federal government funding.

Station owner Stephen Carter says “We've certainly lost a lot of land, we're told something like 600,000 tonnes has disappeared, probably over the past 70 years, from floods and from erosion”.

Alluvium Consulting organised $500,000 worth of works that are calculated to reduce future sediment loss by 90 percent.

Native forest opened up for logging

Thousands of hectares of native forest north of Noosa have been opened to the timber industry in a Labour decision to save logging jobs.

The harvesting permits have been extended to 2026, with the previous expiration date of 2024 threatening up to 500 workers.

The land was going to be turned into a national park, but Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says “This announcement will help secure the employment of 500 Maryborough and Wide Bay locals working in the industry.”