One Nation calls itself the battler’s friend. Gina Rinehart’s plane, the NRA’s phone calls and Big Coal’s Senate votes tell a different story. Howard sowed the tares.
The King’s Speech: A Royal Masterclass in Diplomatic Evisceration
On 28 April 2026, King Charles III stood before a joint session of Congress and delivered twenty minutes of perfectly calibrated diplomatic napalm. He spoke of Magna Carta, judicial independence, NATO and the rule of law. Donald Trump stood there smiling and felt the warmth of the room. He missed everything else.
AUKUS: A Black Comedy in Several Ruinously Expensive Acts
The Palace knew about Kerr’s plan to dismiss Whitlam. Whitlam did not. Fifty-one years later, the same Crown is phoning the American president to sell AUKUS. Urban Wronski on the loyalty that never changed.
Is Trump Bullet-proof?
A man called Cole Tomas Allen arrived at the White House
Correspondents’ Dinner with a shotgun, a pistol, knives, and a
manifesto. He called himself the Friendly Federal Assassin. He
did not kill Trump. But by midnight, the president was invoking
Lincoln, the theology machine was running, and the Epstein
Inspector General probe had slid quietly to the bottom of the
news agenda. Again.
Clarke and Dawe tribute: The PM Explains Gas
Shell’s Australian chair fronted a Senate inquiry into gas taxation and couldn’t say how much revenue Shell makes from selling Australian gas. She was, however, very clear on the ill-advised part. Urban Wronski channels Clarke and Dawe to interview the Prime Minister about the gas we own, the tax we don’t collect, and the modelling that takes time.
THE RECEIPT: the tab
The receipt from the Ararat servo gets longer. Palantir Technologies is watching every movement of every Coles shelf-stacker. The AI bubble is burning gas to produce, so far, almost nothing of measurable value. And thirty-five thousand Victorian teachers walked off the job to tell us what this is all costing. Urban Wronski tallies the full tab.
THE RECEIPT Part One: Where Does the Money Go?
At the Ararat servo, a bloke stares at a $255 diesel receipt and says nothing. That silence is the sound of geopolitics arriving in the western districts. Jim Chalmers is in Washington being told to tighten his belt while Iran runs a tollbooth on the world’s oil supply and Woodside counts its war dividend. Urban Wronski follows the money.
Governments Just Get On With the Job: Mark Butler’s Razor Gang and the NDIS They Want You to Forget
Lisa Goodwin’s twins are autistic. She applied three times, fought for years,
and when Labor announced its latest cuts she called it “a betrayal.” Urban
Wronski on Mark Butler’s razor gang, the $425 billion submarine program eating
the fiscal space disabled children once occupied, the algorithm that replaces
human judgment, and the shearing sheds that would not recognise the party
that grew from them.
The Touska Gambit: Piracy, Power, and the Theatre of Broken Promises
The USS Spruance blew a hole in the engine room of the Touska and Marines rappelled onto the deck. Trump crowed on Truth Social. Iran called it piracy and cancelled the peace talks. Urban Wronski on why the seizure of an Iranian cargo ship was never about a ship — and what is actually being prepared while the cameras watch the theatre.
The Lovely War
Donald Trump threatens Iran the way he once threatened a recalcitrant steak: same wounded, flinty, infant-king fury. A working homage to Martin Amis — on the Epstein flights, the six-billion-dollar goon squad, the taunting of a proud civilisation, and a nine-year-old girl in Minab waiting for the water that is her birthright. The infant-king has other plans.
Urban Wronski Writes 