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This is a sample of The Echidna newsletter sent out each weekday morning. To sign up for FREE, go to theechidna.com.

au Login or signup to continue reading I'll happily admit I'm no oil painting. Too many lines on the face. Hair that's long turned grey.



A permanent look of crankiness forged from a lifetime suffering fools. I feel for you, dear readers, every time my visage pops into your inbox atop The Echidna. It must be alarming first thing in the morning.

There's an uncomfortable tinge of self-consciousness whenever my gaze pauses on that photo byline. How did I grow so old? Why do I look so ..

. unpleasant? But I've felt a little better about it in recent days, thanks to Gina Rinehart. The mining magnate's face was everywhere last week after a clumsy attempt to have it removed from the National Gallery of Australia.

Few would have noticed or even been aware of the portrait by Archibald prize winning Vincent Namatjira until Gina's minions in Hancock Prospecting launched a campaign to have it removed, enlisting the help of elite athletes. Now, the portrait is everywhere. In cartoons, in social media memes, in the pages of national newspapers.

If the intention was to expunge it from public view, the result has been quite the opposite. A bit like Cumberland City Council's vote to remove the same-sex parents book from its library shelves. That book had been borrowed once in the five years it had been on the shelves.

Now everyone knows about it and the councillor who made the ini.

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