James Bond fans will have to wait until April 2020 for the next instalment in the iconic film franchise, but already everyone wants to know more about the brandnew Bond girl, Ana de Armas. The stunning Cuban actor, 31, who will be starring alongside Daniel Craig and Oscar-winner Rami Malek, first found fame on Spanish television, but is still a relative newcomer to Hollywood. Here she talks about her humble beginnings, pure determination and new life in LA.

When did you decide you wanted to be an actor?

I was very young. I would watch movies on the couch in my house. If I saw a scene played by a woman or a man, I would right away run to the mirror and repeat it and do it again. We moved to Havana when I was nine and I heard there was a theatre school. That was the day I said, "Oh, if there is a school, then that's what I want to do, where I want to go." And I made my parents take me for the auditions. That's how it started.

Did your acting dream seem real?

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It was real. You can dream very high, but very few people dream that they can really go outside and have the balls to make that dream happen.

You had the balls to do it, but when did the opportunity come about?

I had the balls and a Spanish passport. So when I was 18 and I graduated from school, it came to my mind: "I want to go to Spain to just try and audition for something and see what happens." I bought a ticket and told my mom, "When I run out of money, I'll come back." I went to Spain with 200 euros in my pocket. I was lucky enough to meet a big casting director a week after I got there. He cast me for one of the biggest TV series ever made in Spain. And I never came back, because I started shooting.

What did you love about Spain?

I loved being independent for real, like finally. To me, my family means everything. I have a very small family, and I'm very close to all of them. But at the same time, I like to do my thing alone. And in Spain, I had that freedom. So when I moved to Spain, that was a great feeling.

Were you quick to adapt to working in English rather than Spanish?

I had to be. I guess your brain gets into survival mode or something. It was like I was learning a new superpower and how to use it. I always saw actors like Penélope [Cruz]. I could tell how hard it was for her at the beginning to feel and to act in English, because it's a different part of your brain. I always thought, "I have to get good at that. I have to be able to be able to feel and not to think about what I'm saying." I just want to feel it.

I always tell my agents, "I'm doing classes, but I want to go to meetings now, and I want to audition now."

"No, but your accent …"

"I don't care about the accent. I don't care. I want to do it, and I don't want to audition for Maria, and Juana, none of that. I want to audition for the same parts everyone else is auditioning for. And I'll make the difference. I'll make them change their minds."

At the beginning, it was a disaster. Nobody understood what I was saying. Even myself couldn't understand the context of what I was reading. I remember little phrases like "I beg your pardon?" or stuff like that. I had no clue what I was saying. But I knew emotionally what the scene was about. So my feelings were in the right place; my mouth was going somewhere else.

How do you mix putting yourself out there with being particular about the parts that you want to play?

There are two things. First, what they think that you can bring to the table, what you can bring to the character to offer, and what you can really offer. But sometimes they already make a decision before you ever get there.

And once you get there, there is another step: You don't look how I was imagining you. Because some of them, they don't even bother to google your photo. "Oh, but you're blonde, and green eyes, and so white. Are you Cuban? Cuban from where? From Miami?"

"No, from Cuba."

"You're Cuban, you're from Cuba?" Like all those kind of steps of being labelled, or being put in just the image they have in their heads.

The next step is that you get in the room for the audition. Then you can try to do your best and convince them that maybe that part that was not written for someone with an accent, or Latina, just someone in the world. It doesn't matter from where. You can play that, and you can do something special, and you can make that part remarkable and something different.

So it is something that, every day, I still have to do it. It's a puzzle.

How often do you get back to Cuba?

It depends on how busy I am that year. Some years I've only been once. So it always depends. I'm on the phone with my parents all the time. I'm in touch with my people always. I don't feel I'm disconnected or even not being there. Probably you pay more attention when you're not there.

Have you adapted to living in LA?

I like LA. It was tough at the beginning, because it can feel very lonely. It's hard to meet people. Everything happens in a house. So if you don't know anybody who invites you to the house, you're not anywhere. But now I have my friends, a great group of people. But also there are a few things that I don't adapt to.

As a human being, you always want to fit in. You don't want to be pointed out. Until the day you realise that you're just different – you cannot be from the same colour. They're all grey and you're pink. And that's your strength. The best thing I have is that nobody's me.

You don't have to try to fit. You have to just be yourself and do what you have to do. Why would you want it to be someone else that already exists? You can't. It's taken. Be you, and do what you've got.

Is there anything about the lifestyle in LA that you embraced that you hadn't experienced before?

There is something about LA that's all this healthy life, but in a good way. There is this nice routine in the mornings when you go get a juice, go for a walk with your dog, or go for a hike. In Cuba, I grew up with so many trees, and by the ocean, and walking a lot. It was something so regular for me, like so ordinary, that you forget what you're seeing. It's just your every day.

I remember when I moved from Cuba to Spain, all I wanted to have was a very clean, new apartment with new windows, and airconditioned. Because [in Cuba] all I had was a balcony with messy plants hanging around me, and it was hot. So you always want what you don't have. I realised how much I miss that nature, and I can see how here people really appreciate that.

Do you look for certain kinds of roles or take each one as they come?

So far, I've done the best with what I've got. Of course I see projects that I really want to do, and the parts that I really would love to play, and I can get to that. I want to do everything and beyond.

I want to create some impact. Until now, I've been always the wife or the girlfriend of the lead actor in a movie. I've learnt a lot, and I really enjoyed it, and I played it because I really wanted the part. But there's more than that. There are great female roles that are not only reacting or creating the situation for him to be the hero. I want to show how strong and smart women are.

We go through so much. We need to see that on screen. Those female parts, not many, but they are out there, and I have to find some. I want that chance.

Do you have a career masterplan?

I don't think about that. I just don't want to do that to myself. I don't want to create that anticipation and expectations to myself. Because I know for sure, because they've never done it, my parents are not waiting for me to come back home with a trophy or anything to prove. So the only one that can get in my head is just me, and I don't want to do that. Whatever happens, happens.

OUR FAVOURITE BOND GIRLS
Ana de Armas is following in the footsteps of many memorable women who have wooed 007. Here are 10 who lead the way.

• MARY GOODNIGHT who was played by Britt Ekland in The Man with the Golden Gun.
• WAI LIN who was played by Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies.
• SOLITAIRE who was played by Jane Seymour in Live and Let Die.
• HONEY RYDER who was played by Ursula Andress in Dr No.
• MAY DAY who was played by Grace Jones in A View to a Kill.
• GIACINTA “JINX” JOHNSON who was played by Halle Berry in Die Another Day.
• TATIANA ROMANOVA who was played by Daniela Bianchi in From Russia with Love.
• TRACY BOND who was played by Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
• PUSSY GALORE who played Honor Blackman in Goldfinger.
• VESPER LYND who was played by Eva Green in Casino Royale.

This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale May 26.

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House Democrats, under the leadership of Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are slowly marching themselves toward the opening of an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. What seemed out of the question earlier in the year now seems, if not inevitable, increasingly difficult to resist.

Pelosi will not say anything like that at this point. She will continue to try to communicate to both sides of her divided party, nodding to hard-liners by suggesting that Trump's actions constitute potentially impeachable offences while bowing to vulnerable members in swing districts by speaking cautiously about impeachment itself.

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"We're not at that place," Pelosi said at a Thursday news conference, when the question of impeachment came up.

That caution came after she noted that the investigations currently underway in the House could lead to "a place that is unavoidable in terms of impeachment". She also asserted that the White house "is just crying out" for impeachment, which she likely sees as a trap.

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Trump has certainly put the Democrats in a difficult position. His past actions to disrupt and interfere with the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller are spelled out in detail in Mueller's report.

Attorney-General William Barr has said the evidence does not constitute obstruction of justice. Others strongly disagree, including many House Democrats who want to hear more about those episodes.

Beyond the contents of the Mueller report and what they say about the question of obstruction, the administration has further inflamed things by blocking virtually all requests from congressional committees for documents for investigations into various Trump-related matters.

The President also ordered former White House counsel Donald McGahn not to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. When McGahn defied a subpoena from the committee, chairman Jerrold Nadler threatened to hold a vote to hold him in contempt.

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The administration's resistance has put before Pelosi and other House leaders the question of whether an administration can indefinitely stonewall the legislative branch with impunity, a question with constitutional and practical significance for this and future presidencies. The time for an answer might still be premature, given current legal proceedings.

But as Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren put it during a CNN town hall last month, "There is no political inconvenience exception to the United States Constitution".

The politics of impeachment remain fraught. Many Democrats still believe the party should focus all its energies on the 2020 election and seek to deny the President a second term through the ballot box. That's a far cleaner remedy than the high stakes of an impeachment proceeding that would die in the Senate if it reached fruition in the House.

But for Democrats, there is no guarantee of victory in the 2020 election. For all his vulnerabilities, Trump presides over a strong economy and enjoys the power of incumbency, which he is prepared to use to the fullest.

Few Democrats are unduly optimistic about victory in 2020, despite the party's strong performance in the 2018 midterm elections and signs of continued energy by the same kinds of voters who helped deliver that election outcome. The Democrats remain scarred by what happened in 2016.

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Pelosi knows that public opinion overall is not on the side of the Democrats. A majority of Americans continue to oppose impeachment. But public opinion among Democrats is in a different place. That's why a number of candidates for the Democratic nomination have expressed their support for at least the opening of an inquiry. It's a popular position with the base.

Pelosi can play both sides only for so long. At some point, she and her committee chairs will have to make a decision. That may not be for months, given the legal machinery now clanking along. She will try to keep deferring an ultimate decision, but the consequences of acting or not acting become more pressing as time passes.

Pelosi and Trump continue to circle one another with taunts and insults. Pelosi criticised Trump for abruptly walking out of a meeting with congressional leaders on infrastructure on Wednesday at the Oval Office, after she had accused him of a coverup during a meeting with her own troops.

Pelosi on Thursday said the President could benefit from a "leave of absence" and perhaps needs “an intervention, for the good of the country” by family or staff.

Trump responded on Thursday by polling his staff at a news conference, asking them to explain to reporters that he wasn't angry or intemperate when he walked out of the meeting with Pelosi and other congressional leaders. It was an extraordinary display on the part of a President.

Trump called himself a "stable genius". He said the Speaker is a "different person" than the leader he began dealing with earlier. He called her "crazy Nancy". He said, "She's lost it."

Such is the state of the relationship between the President and the most powerful Democrat in the country.

Pelosi bested Trump earlier in the year during the government shutdown when she called his bluff and forced him to reopen agencies without giving him funding for his border wall. He responded later by declaring a national emergency to allow him to take the money from other funds in the Defence Department.

In this latest standoff, each has pushed the other into a corner. Pelosi certainly knows how to provoke the President, as she demonstrated again the past few days. But his defiance of Congress has left her with the most difficult of choices, for the country and for her party.

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Trump is pushing the country toward a constitutional crisis – many believe it is already here. His actions have riled the Democrats on Capitol Hill and generated anger in the party's base. Pelosi is now buffeted as she weighs what to do. Sliding into impeachment is hardly the preferred choice, but can she resist the political forces inside her party that are pushing in that direction?

The Speaker plays a long game. As Trump has learned, she is shrewd, tough and experienced. Still, the coming test over impeachment could be the most difficult of her career.

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Dexter Fletcher is leaning forward on a table, thinking about the first Elton John song he ever heard.

“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, ‘round at my cousin Caroline’s house, back in the 1970s when it came out,” he says. “I couldn’t have been more than eight years old or something like that.”

Over the past few years the music of the 1970s has become somewhat of a specialty subject for the British director, who is sitting in a harbour-view room, all wild grey hair and spectacles, at the Park Hyatt in Sydney to promote his Elton John biopic Rocketman.

In fact, if this was Hard Quiz, you could narrow Fletcher’s speciality down even further to, say, gay British music superstars of the 1970s and '80s who enjoyed glittering one-piece stage outfits, had memorable teeth and prodigious drug habits.

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Rocketman follows last year’s Oscar-winning Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, of which Fletcher was a ring-in director after the original director Bryan Singer was fired from the project.

But where Bohemian Rhapsody was accused of glossing over singer Freddie Mercury’s sexuality and drug use, Rocketman jumps right in with graphic-enough sex, scenes of John snorting cocaine and, in case there was any confusion, with John saying outright: “I’m gay.”

“It doesn’t try to shy away from the darker aspects of this journey that Elton goes on and that – a musical that has darkness as well as light – was a really exhilarating and exciting idea,” says Fletcher, who at 53 is still just as well known for the children’s show Press Gang, where he played Spike to Julia Sawalha’s Lynda.

Both Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody had heavy involvement from their subjects – John and his husband David Furnish produced Rocketman, while Mercury’s bandmates Brian May and Roger Taylor were consultants on Bohemian Rhapsody and it was produced by the band’s manager Jim Beach – which can raise questions of impartiality. Can you ever really tell someone’s truth if they’re paying the bills?

“With Freddie’s story, for example, he’s not here to defend himself,” says Fletcher. “That is a film made by people who love him or loved him, so rightly or wrongly, they defend it in the way that they do, or they protect him in the way that they do. And that answers why that film is the way that it is.

“Similarly, Elton is here to defend himself. And if there’s something I get wildly wrong, or people go, ‘God that’s outrageous’, he can defend himself. He’s a big boy.”

The one thing Rocketman does skip over slightly is John’s 1984 wedding to Renate Blauel at St Mark's in Sydney’s Darling Point. The marriage lasted only four years, but it only receives about four minutes in the film.

Was that something John didn’t want mentioned?

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“It wasn’t even in the original script when I got it,” says Fletcher. “It was something that I put in. I never got ‘No no, no don’t put that in’. There’s many things I wanted to know about and put in, and I never got no.”

Rocketman is but the latest in a conga line of musical films heading into cinemas this year, with the Beatles-inspired Yesterday opening in July, the Bruce Springsteen fan fiction Blinded by the Light due in August and the George Michael-soundtracked  Last Christmas opening in December.

Is there anyone whose life story, or music, is unfilmable?

“You could do a story about anyone,” says Fletcher, who gave Scottish group the Proclaimers their musical moment in his first film Sunshine on Leith. “But what’s the in, what’s the compelling element of it?”

What about the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards? People might want to know how he’s still alive after years of, ahem, free living.

“I can’t answer to that,” says Fletcher, smiling. “It’s the endless fascination to him. I’m sure there’s people who know who can tell you the secrets, I can’t.”

Rocketman opens on May 30. 

The Academy Award-nominated American filmmaker Ava DuVernay was 16-years-old in April 1989 when five teenage boys from Harlem were charged with the brutal attack and rape of a female jogger in New York’s Central Park. DuVernay lived in Los Angeles, on the other side of the country, but the strident reporting and racial overtones of the story, which dominated newspaper headlines and television newscasts, came through clearly: the victim was white, while four of the accused were African-American and the other was Hispanic.

The crime, and the subsequent investigation, rapid arrest and conviction of the five juveniles, complete with confessions, galvanises When They See Us, DuVernay’s compelling new Netflix limited series about the teenagers who would become th

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e Central Park Five – a title used to initially identify their crime, and later their innocence. In 2002 the convictions of the five men were vacated, after the actual attacker confessed, and they were subsequently awarded US$41 million in damages after suing the city of New York.

“The subject matter has to reach me in a really personal place if I’m going to marry myself to it for years. I started working on this in 2015, and I really felt this one,” DuVernay says. “The story is an epic tale and there is a lot of tragedy in it, but it ends triumphantly. These men are alive, they’re well, they’re thriving, and justice was served. It’s rare for a story like this to end like this.”

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Fresh off a flight back home to Los Angeles, where the 46-year-old has carved out a career in feature films (Selma, A Wrinkle in Time), documentaries (13th), and television series (Queen Sugar), DuVernay talks about the real life events and the five hours she dramatised about it with a mixture of incisive detail and lyrical power. The four episodes of When They See Us have the same sense of intimate experience and historic judgment – it’s a shocking and immersive viewing experience, but one elevated by lyrical reflection.

“It could have easily been a procedural, as true crime dramas are all the rage right now, and it has all the makings of that,” DuVernay says, “but I realised that if I was doing this so the men can be heard, then I should always stay with them. Even on the set, when I had ideas in the middle of shooting a scene, I would remind myself, ‘this is about those boys’.”

“Everything I did, every script, every scene, every cut, every decision about a

costume or location,” she adds, “was about how

to design the story around the perspective of these five men and the people who loved them.”

DuVernay has an activist’s energy and a storyteller’s eye. She’d long followed the case in the media, and in 2015 as her profile blossomed with the success of Selma, her searing examination of Dr Martin Luther King’s 1965 civil rights march in America’s segregated south, she found a tweet sent to her by Raymond Santana jnr, one of the five men in the Central Park Five. “What’s your next film gonna be on?” he asked, with the hashtags #centralpark5 and #fingerscrossed offering his hopeful answer.

The director soon met Santana for dinner, then with what he calls his “brothers”: Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise and Antron McCray. DuVernay instinctively knew that their story had a classic three-act structure, perfect for a film or series, but beyond that she sensed that so much of the work she’d done to date, going back to her 2012 independent feature Middle of Nowhere, was a kind of preparation for telling the complete story of the Central Park Five.

“This is the fourth work I’ve made that looks at different aspects of the criminal justice system,” DuVernay says, “Middle of Nowhere showed me the impact of incarceration on families, while 13th explained the structure of a fixed system and Selma talked about resistance and how to push back. I feel like When They See Us is the sum total of everything I’ve made up to this point.”

That authority comes to bear from the first episode, which identifies the boys and their lives, as well as their presence in Central Park on the night in question, before dashing it upon a police and investigatory system that is institutionally racist.

Felicity Huffman’s Linda Fairstein, the then head of the Sex Crimes Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, is the first to identify the boys as “animals”, and the investigating detectives under her in turn coerce confessions and abridge the legal rights of minors. There is no official dissenting voice, even from African-American or Hispanic police officers.

“What I’m hoping people can see is that once you’re ensnared in the system it is you against the state. When you look at the documents of people trying to defend themselves against alleged crimes in this country, you see that person’s name versus the state,” DuVernay says. “A whole state is putting all its resources against one person, and that person may not have any resources or be educated to their rights. It’s an overwhelming experience and it is designed to overwhelm.”

Shot on location in New York by DuVernay and her long-time collaborator, cinematographer Bradford Young (Selma, Arrival), When They See Us folds in the American media’s rush to judgment and the inflammatory actions of then New York property developer Donald Trump, but it always returns to the humanity of those involved. The first episode ends with the boys meeting after they’ve been railroaded, a bittersweet moment of camaraderie and shame.

“Hopefully people can understand that these aren’t criminals, they’re people ensnared in the system where every twist and turn is designed to take you deeper and deeper into an abyss and away from being a part of society,” DuVernay says. “They were human beings – they weren’t a wolf pack, they weren’t animals. It’s the same with so many people behind bars: they have families, dreams and beating hearts.”

When They See Us premieres on Netflix, Friday, May 31.

Daniel Henshall is so skilled at playing evil characters like Snowtown's serial killer John Bunting that he's become used to people feeling let down when they meet him in real life.

"There's often a hint of disappointment that there isn't that gravitas or intensity they were expecting," says the softly spoken Sydney-born, Brooklyn-based actor. "I've got used to going, 'Sorry'."

The latest addition to the 36-year-old's catalogue of nasties is the late painter Adam Cullen in Acute Misfortune. In it, he tortures – mentally and, occasionally, physically – the young journalist Erik Jensen, on whose book the film is based.

He lived with the role of Cullen for years, helping director Thomas M. Wright, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jensen, to shape the character. He learnt to paint, to shoot, to skin an animal. He put on weight – and, later, shed it – for the shoot too. But, says Henshall, he never felt he was being subsumed by Cullen.

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"I definitely never stay in character," he says. "I like playing the fool on set, making jokes, chilling out. When it's time to lock in I lock in, but I find that the easier it is on set – the less tense it is when it doesn't need to be – the better the environment to work in. You don't need the earnestness and the seriousness to be front-and-centre every day."

It's a relief to hear that hanging around Henshall while he's working isn't likely to be life-threatening, especially since he can also be seen in next month's Sydney Film Festival playing a violent Nazi skinhead in the American feature Skin. But he's dubious anyway about those tales of actors who stay in character for months at a time while working on a film.

"I think there's a reverence around that notion that isn't completely honest," he says. "It's a great selling point – 'He stayed in character' – but it isn't necessarily true."

What Henshall does do is find a way to empathise with the character he is playing, no matter how vile they might appear to be.

In the case of the alcoholic and hyper-masculine Cullen, that meant understanding him as someone who had never recovered from a failed relationship, someone who was, despite his success (including as a serial finalist in and, in 2000, winner of the Archibald Prize), "a very isolated and lonely, sensitive person who leaned on very self-destructive practices to keep himself from the rejection of the art world".

In the case of Bunting, who was found guilty in 2003 of murdering 11 people, Henshall honed in on the suggestion that he had been sexually abused as a child. "I've never been abused but there was something in that, I could see a lost child who didn't develop emotionally," he says. "That was the key to locking in to John – this little child that wasn't necessarily loved in a way he deserved to be."

That willingness to go deep is what breathes such intensity and authenticity into Henshall's performances. But for those who know him best, it can also make for unsettling viewing.

Just the day before we sit down to chat – me with my recorder, he with his notebook full of jottings because he's a bit jet-lagged and has a tendency "to wander off the path fairly easily" – his mother had told him how difficult she finds it to see him in the kind of violent men in which he seems to specialise.

"She said, ‘It’s hard for me to separate my son, in whom I instilled these values and who is a gentle person – though I know he can be angry too – and these roles'," he says.

His parents are strongly Anglican, and still involved in community and charity work through the church. And while he says he's "absolutely not" religious, perhaps some of that caring rubbed off regardless.

"I try to instil in these characters an affability, to give them a chance to be heard," he says of his studies in toxic masculinity. "Not just to look at the behaviour, but to what led to that behaviour."

Henshall says he and his wife, costume designer Stacey O'Connor (the pair share a place in Green Point, Brooklyn, with fellow Aussie actor Sarah Snook) are hoping to start a family soon. That's both a mark of age – "I feel like I'm finally turning into an adult nearing the age of 37" – and proof of the confidence he finally feels in his career, thanks to a four-season stint in the American Revolutionary drama Turn: Washington's Spies and roles in Hollywood films Ghost in the Shell and Okja, as well as a part alongside Chris Captain America Evans in Defending Jacob, a forthcoming series for Apple.

He's not always cast as the villain, of course; in both the recent Stan drama Bloom and Foxtel's forthcoming Lambs of God, he plays a cop. But if his future path includes more bad guys, he won't be complaining.

"I find it really interesting to unpick the facade of masculinity," he says. "Really unpicking some of those complex emotions and insecurities, that fascinates me."

No fear of being typecast then?

"I wish you would," he says softly. "Bring it on."

Follow the author on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin

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A homeless man has been charged with murder following the "horrendous" death of 25-year-old Courtney Herron in Parkville.

Ms Herron, who was homeless, was found dead by dog walkers in Royal Park on Saturday morning, sparking a major police investigation.

A 27-year-old man of no fixed address was arrested on Sunday and charged with one count of murder overnight.

He will appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday.

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Police say Ms Herron was slain in a "horrendous bashing" before her body was found. Homicide squad Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper said there was no evidence the attack was sexually motivated.

Ms Herron attempted to call former boyfriend Terrick Edwards in the hours before her death, his sister Nindara Edwards Norris told The Age. She said he now felt responsible "for not being able to offer her a safe place for the night".

The couple had lived in the inner northern suburb of Northcote for "many years" and remained close after separating four years ago, Ms Norris said.

Ms Herron was raised in the northern suburbs, Ms Norris said. She has a sister and brother and was "a part of a beautiful caring Greek-Aussie family".

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Ms Herron had suffered "many mental illness issues and recurring homelessness" since the split with her brother, according to Ms Norris.

She said her brother would want Ms Herron "to be remembered for the lovely woman she was and not just another homeless person who died on the streets".

Ms Herron had worked for a government department "a number of years ago", Ms Norris said.

"So to end up homeless and on the street is truly shocking for people to grasp."

Melburnians will gather for a vigil on Friday at 5.30pm at Royal Park, with organisers urging people to "join together" to pay tribute to Ms Herron and reclaim the public park.

"All people deserve safety in this world. Sadly, once again we must mourn the loss of an innocent woman in a place known to so many of us."

Bouquets and heartfelt messages have been placed by mourners at a group of logs behind where Ms Herron's body was found.

The makeshift shrine was continuing to grow on Monday morning, with friends and complete strangers braving the bitter cold winds to make their way across Royal Park and pay their respects.

Annette Graham, 48, didn’t know Ms Herron, but arrived with her 11-year-old son Coulton to place a bouquet of bright yellow roses tied with a red ribbon.

"I wanted to send a message to whoever loved this poor lady, that we are thinking of them, and thinking of her."

Ms Graham, who lives locally in North Melbourne, walks here four or five times a week at 7am and is wondering if it’s still safe to do so.

"It just felt close to home and I just felt’it’s enough. It has to stop. The violence has to stop."

She used to walk at Royal Park at 6am or earlier but said 18 months ago she was followed at strange man and became scared.

A friend of Ms Herron's, who asked not to be named, on Sunday left flowers at the site and wept on the shoulder of another friend.

"She was kind and she was lovely and she was a great friend," she said.

Matt Walsh knew Ms Herron in high school and said she was one of the most kind-hearted people he had ever met.

"[She was] always smiling and joking, trying to make herself and others happy. That's how I'll remember her," he said.

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Jadee Craggles posted on Facebook about her anger at Ms Herron's life being taken so young.

"Breaks my heart that we live in such a f—ed up world, nobody deserves this," she said. "It was a pleasure knowing you; even not seeing you in years."

Ms Craggles told The Age she hadn't seen Courtney since high school, and was shocked to hear that she had been struggling.

"She was a beautiful, normal young girl, breaks my heart to hear she was doing it so tough now," she said.

Detective Inspector Stamper said Ms Herron had lived a difficult life, struggling with drugs and mental health issues.

He described Ms Herron as a "vulnerable" member of the community who society had failed to protect.

"This was a young woman who had significant challenges in life. We as a community should be protecting these people and we didn't. We failed on this occasion," he said.

Detective Inspector Stamper said Ms Herron's family was "heartbroken".

"Courtney had had sporadic contact with her family, which is very much part of the challenges that happen when there is a child that suffers drug use and mental health issues … family relationships can be fragmented," he said.

"But I stress, that doesn't mean that families out there don't love their children and their heart breaks for them. We're dealing with a heartbroken family."

The last confirmed sighting of Ms Herron was on May 14 in St Albans when she spoke with police about a minor matter relating to her mental health and drug use.

Police said that towards the end of her life she was transient and interacted with a lot of people, who may be able to help police map out her movements in the final weeks of her life.

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It says everything about Scott Morrison and his reborn government that the big theme of his new ministry is deliberately humdrum.

While Labor promised vast reform at the federal election, the Coalition offered more of the same with a pledge to keep improving. And it won.

The result is a new ministry that is all about management rather than bold new agendas, about keeping existing programs under control before embarking on any new ones.

Expectations are high for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the delivery has already been marked by anger and disappointment when people miss out on the services they need. Stuart Robert has a significant challenge in fixing this.

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The National Broadband Network has infuriated some of its customers with cumbersome roll-outs and problems with speed. Paul Fletcher, who wrote a book about broadband policy, has his work cut out.

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The Coalition has made few commitments in social services, and has no plan to increase Newstart, but this is an area where delivery is a constant challenge and failures make headlines. Anne Ruston moves into cabinet with a substantial task ahead as Minister for Families and Social Services.

Liberals are already jostling to replace two senators, Arthur Sinodinos and Mitch Fifield, who will take up diplomatic posts. A push is under way in Victoria to give that state's upper house position to Sarah Henderson, who lost her seat of Corangamite at the election. Senator Jim Molan is being named as a potential candidate if he loses his seat in the ongoing count from the May 18 election.

Those who helped Morrison ascend to the leadership last August gain positions in this ministry, but not to an extent that is disproportionate. Robert is one. Two others, Steve Irons and Ben Morton, serve at assistant minister level.

A fourth, Alex Hawke, takes on a dual responsibility for defence and foreign aid, with an emphasis on the Pacific. It is an interesting strategic appointment given the expansion of Chinese influence.

Some of those who supported Peter Dutton last August keep their positions or gain bigger roles. Alan Tudge is promoted to cabinet, while Greg Hunt and Angus Taylor stay in their portfolios. Taylor gains responsibility for emissions reduction as well as energy. Michael Sukkar becomes Assistant Treasurer, an important role.

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The biggest loser from this reshuffle, Melissa Price, suffers from being a poor advocate in the environment portfolio. Morrison was under no pressure to admit he made a mistake with her appointment last year, but he bit the bullet.

Importantly, he promoted Ruston and Sussan Ley to ensure there were still seven women in cabinet.

Also important is his decision to name Nola Marino and Jane Hume as assistant ministers. This does not fix all the Liberal Party's troubles in recruiting and promoting women, but it is another step forward.

The Waratahs are clinging to hope they can give some of their biggest names the farewell they deserve despite falling to their eighth loss of the season against the Jaguares at the weekend.

NSW remain a mathematical chance to snatch a wildcard spot in the Super Rugby finals but now face back-to-back games against the Rebels and Brumbies, the two teams ranked above them in the conference standings, before a final away game against the Highlanders.

A dejected dressing room at Bankwest Stadium on Saturday was forced to confront the fact plans to send off club veterans Sekope Kepu and Nick Phipps with a red-hot tilt at a title were on life support.

"Extremely disappointing. That one really hurt, we knew it was a crucial game for us," Kurtley Beale said.

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"I thought that there were patches there where we did some really good things but we hurt ourselves with some poor errors. Not having that discipline to stick to the shape, and they put a lot of pressure on us."

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Phipps and Kepu are not the only big names leaving Daceyville at season's end. Winger Curtis Rona is joining Premiership club London Irish, while Beale, NSW five-eighth Bernard Foley, Test second rower Rob Simmons and centre Karmichael Hunt are also off contract at the end of the year.

Beale brushed off questions about his future, preferring to focus on the upcoming Test season.

"I haven’t really thought about it too much, I'm leaving it up to my management, there’s a few things happening around the traps," Beale said.

"This is a massive year for me, I’m just trying to make sure I get my body right now and focus on week in, week out. I’m making sure I can contribute the best way I can."

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The veteran Waratah signed with the club as a teenager and turned 30 this year, with a two-season stint in Melbourne and a year in England the only disruptions to 10 seasons in the NSW blue.

Beale urged his teammates to remain "hopeful" the cards would fall in their favour over the final three rounds of the season.

"It’s important for us to not be too down," he said.

"We can hurt over this but be very hopeful about the next few weeks. They’re all grand final matches and you have to be hopeful at this stage of the season."

The Waratahs face a tight turnaround to prepare for Friday's clash with the Rebels at AAMI Park. The second-placed Australian team look set to field a line up minus experienced No.9 Will Genia after he was knocked out in the side's thumping win over the Sunwolves.

But NSW will also be depleted, with Hunt expected to be out for six weeks with a medial ligament knee injury, Test hooker Tolu Latu stood down awaiting a court appearance and Israel Folau's recent exit.

Manly winger Lalakai Foketi was solid as Hunt's replacement and will be favoured to start at No.12 against the Rebels, but it is the NSW game managers who will need to step up if they are to topple the Rebels.

"We're working really hard," Beale said. "No team goes out there to lose. There's a couple of games this year when we just lost by a point or so and it could have been a different season for us.

"In saying that our season’s not at the end. We play another three games and we’ve got to be hopeful.

"That’s an important thing for us as a group now. Stay tight and make sure we keep working hard for each other. We’re hoping a game or two can turn it around and be the difference. That’s what a tough grinding season is, making sure we’re all in it together in the dying stages."

Arthur Sinodinos is the ultimate steady pair of hands.

He'll need to be. The Trump administration's upheaval of American politics, the United States' sharpening rivalry with China and fears about the reliability of the American presence in Asia raise the diplomatic stakes to an all-time high.

Never has it been more important for Australia's voice to be clearly heard in the clamorous US capital, where the whole world is striving for the attention of the superpower's decision-makers.

Sinodinos has a number of qualities to recommend him. He is deeply experienced, connected and respected.

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As the former chief-of-staff to then prime minister John Howard, who did not hesitate to back George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks and in the Iraq invasion – despite the latter's being an American strategic blunder – Sinodinos is inextricably linked in many senior Washington figures' minds with a high watermark of the ANZUS alliance.

"He's a consigliere," said Simon Jackman, CEO of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. "He's a great counsellor to prime ministers and to his party. He's a straight shooter, which is exactly what you need when there are hard conversations to be had about what Australia can do and what it is less likely to be able to."

Current ambassador Joe Hockey has very tight relationships with Trump's inner circle, Jackman says, including his acting chief-of-staff, Mick Mulvaney. Sinodinos will be able to pick up that role immediately.

He'll need every bit of his smarts, his charm, his persistence to steadily convey to the Americans a few things Canberra wants to happen – and not to happen.

We want the US and China to manage their great power competition sensibly. We don't want to have to choose between them. We want trade differences resolved through an international system of rules. We don't want the world's technology supply chains and markets to be split into a US sphere and a Chinese sphere.

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We most definitely don't want to be thrown under the bus in any trade deal between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

And we don't want to be drawn into the Fox News conspiracy theory – which Trump has embraced by asking his Attorney-General William Barr to investigate – that senior elements of US intelligence and law enforcement plotted with foreigners, including the Australian government, to concoct the Russia allegations.

At the centre of that conspiracy theory is George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign aid who famously met with former foreign minister Alexander Downer in a London wine bar.

Papadopoulos, who seems genuinely to think he is James Bond, tweeted on Sunday morning that the US should "expose the Australians" and added that "they need us. We don't need them!"

Sinodinos will find many friends in Washington. There is still an overwhelmingly sensible centre of gravity in the world's most powerful capital. He'll need those people to mediate the more extreme characteristics of the Trump administration.

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It was a business brainwave that came while having a cuppa and Pod Star co-founder Kirsten Williams says traction is only growing.

"It is actually a business that is made from a mission — and the mission isn’t about getting rich."

Instead, it's all about harnessing Australian consumer's appetite for a war on waste to let them have their capsule coffee machines without the stress over empty pods.

The global market value of tea and coffee pods jumped from $22 billion in 2017 to $42.4 billion in 2019, according to Fior Markets. Millions of pods are disposed of in Australia each year.

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The major market leaders in Australia including Nespresso and Aldi have services to recycle the pods, with postal and drop off options for customers.

Scrapping single use

Despite this, founders like Williams and her partner Mark Denning, have questioned why there needs to be single-use capsules at all.

Last year the duo embarked on a project that saw "a couple of fails": reverse-engineering the design of stainless steel pods that can be successfully used in different capsule coffee machine brands.

It was a process of designing prototypes, running them through machines and then tasting the resulting coffee until the company had the perfect fit for the products consumers already owned.

"The idea is that it should be able to last a lifetime… though it wasn't quite as simple as putting any coffee in and away it went," Williams says.

The couple invested just over $20,000 to start the design and manufacturing process and now offer reusable pods that fit the Aldi, Caffitaly and Nespresso machine brands.

Users buy coffee that is ground for reusable machines and then can add a small portion to the capsule each time they brew a cup.

Williams says after more than a decade operating a commercial printing business, the switch to a company designed to reduce waste is heartening.

"To us it’s exciting, as with every sale we get, we’re not just making money. Somebody is partnering with us," she says.

Less than a year on from launching the company, it's turning over more than $200,000.

Sustainability becomes 'a fad'

For the first-movers in Australia's eco-coffee space, tracking consumers' budding concerns about waste has been a fascinating process.

"Sustainability has almost become a fad — that’s not necessarily a bad thing," says founder of Melbourne's Crema Joe, Kayla Mossuto.

"We have found and we can see a lot of business-minded people jumping on board and capitalising on this wave. If that's contributing to reducing waste, that's the most important thing, really."

Mossuto and her husband founded Crema Joe around five years ago and were also inspired by their own at-home coffee making experiences.

Crema Joe doesn't produce its own pods, instead it operates an online store is licenced to sell global reusable capsule brands including Sealpod, Waycap and Bluecup.

As the company heads towards $1 million in revenue, Mossuto believes her community of customers avoid using 11.5 million disposable capsules a year by switching to reusable items.

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Mossuto says the growth has been "pretty substantial" off the back of a $10,000 personal investment used to kick off the business.

Even so, she's aware that as fashions and consumer trends change, she might need to review the business.

"We talk about not having our eggs all in one basket. With capsule machines, who knows how long they'll be around for. This is supporting our family and staff as well – it's important [the business] does well," she says.

At the moment, Crema Joe is focused on coming up with a reusable solution for as many pod machines on the market as possible. In the long-term, giving shoppers a convenient way to reduce their waste is the larger goal, Mossuto says.

"As far as customer loyalty goes, it’s always been the number one priority for us. We want to provide them with a long-term solution. It's important they have a good experience with us."

The company's calculator predicts that if you buy ground coffee at $20.00 for 250g, customers drinking three coffees a day can save more than $150 a year using a reusable pod in their machines compared with a disposable option.

Is there a worry the big machine manufacturers will decide to roll out their own reusable pods to go alongside single-use options?

"Not really. If there’s not that repeat purchase, it’s not worth it for that kind of company. Single use is where the profits are," Mossuto says.

Nespresso has been contacted for comment on the prevalence of multi-use pods in its machines.

In a warranty card for its products sold in Australia, it warns consumers 'any defect resulting from the usage of non genuine Nespresso capsules will not be covered' when making claims under the company's own warranty.

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