Mushroom madness: The trial of Erin Patterson, the woman accused of killing three of her family members by lacing a beef wellington with poisonous mushrooms, is underway in Victoria. Three people dead, a mother pleading not guilty — it’s serious stuff.

Luckily, everyone is being really calm and respectful about it, including the ABC, which is spruiking a podcast called Mushroom Case Daily, advertised with a picture of the accused’s face inside a mushroom. Daily Mail also has a daily podcast on the matter, as does the Herald Sun. When there’s not enough content for the day? They do a recap! A Q&A! The ABC even offered a 19 minute episode on “A short history of mushrooms”. Anything to keep the macabre voyeurs happy.

Get rent!: Renters know they’re in the shit, with rock-bottom affordability and rental vacancy rates alarmingly low. Enter Rich Lister Tim Gurner, one the country’s biggest apartment developers, posing in the AFR in the lavish lobby of his own build-to-rent project on Melbourne’s Southbank, to tell you why it’s going to stay that way.

He’s a property millionaire! In a suit! With a nice watch! Back with the latest instalment of his advice column educating the masses on why they’ll be screwed forever. No, it’s not too much smashed avocado this time, or arrogant workers. Just a timely reminder to all that the rental crisis is here to stay.

“We have a good five to 15 years’ worth of rental crisis coming where there’s going to be a huge amount of pressure on supply.”

We’re sure this rallying cry has nothing to do with increasing his bottom line (despite pointing out the government has to “find a way to increase supply which allows us to drop our cost. It’s the only way to do it”).

He’s not wrong: Sky News’ Chris Kenny pointed out this week that the Liberals have done what the Labor Party never has: elected a woman as leader of the party from opposition. He’s technically not wrong. What Kenny mentioned afterwards through gritted teeth is that, of course, Labor elected Julia Gillard as leader of the party while it was in government.

Of the 16 women to serve as the head of government (at state or federal level) in Australia, 13 were Labor politicians. Not quite the win for the Liberal Party that Kenny made it out to be. 

Shopjob: When this picture of new Liberal leader Sussan Ley and NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman was posted by Speakman’s office on X on Tuesday, a Liberal source forwarded the tweet to a Crikey reporter saying it looked like a “terrible photoshop” job. It had clearly been tampered with — the deep Liberal blue background colour didn’t quite match the outline of the two leaders’ hair.

Could it be another case of a quick Photoshop job to hide an embarrassing background, ala Wayne Swan, Tanya Plibersek and Julia Gillard in the Qantas Lounge?

Nah. Speakman’s office had simply cropped out the quite ordinary background, and was even kind enough to supply the original photograph. It shows Speakman and Ley in front of a wall bearing the logo lobby group Business Sydney.

“It’s not Photoshop — just two Liberals standing together with a sponsor wall cropped out,” Speakman told Crikey. “The real story is the federal Liberal Party’s first woman leader, and the NSW Liberals are proud to stand with her.”

Peggy who?: Cheek Media founder Hannah Ferguson addressed the National Press Club this week (to twice the audience that News Corp executive chair Michael Miller got, incidentally), and received a question about the “gen Z of it all” from Sarah Rudd, a local university student. 

Rudd asked about Peggy Sue, a viral TikTok meme targeting former opposition leader Peter Dutton. Peggy Sue is the moniker given to an anonymous client of TikToker and sex worker Kayla Jade, who has said that the client is a “man of power in the workplace”, with proclivities for a certain sexual act. Rudd went on to ask whether the major parties were capable of producing leaders who were sensible options for women under 30, among whom the Peggy Sue meme spread like wildfire. 

Ferguson said that while she covered the meme on her podcast as an example of caricatures of politicians and a representation of the zeitgeist around young women, the meme made her “incredibly uncomfortable” and served as “sexual shaming of someone that’s never been identified”. 

While Dutton never addressed the meme, it’s clear it was noticed by his party — Rudd isn’t just a local university student, but also a staffer for Canberra Liberal leader Leanne Castley.