A federal budget that delivers $250 a year to workers while handing $16.3 billion to fossil fuel companies.

The Budget That Will Not Save You

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The 2026-27 federal budget breaks two election promises, grows fossil fuel subsidies faster than the NDIS, hands $250 a year to workers, and approves gas drilling until 2080. Jim Chalmers was right that the can had been kicked far enough. He has been less forthcoming about who was doing the kicking.

A darkly comic editorial illustration showing a scoreboard reading ONE NATION 1, LIBERAL PARTY 0, DEMOCRACY: ONGOING, with the word ONGOING struck through. Below, grey-suited figures hold blank newspapers before a shuttered regional newsagent and a featureless television broadcaster.

The Scorecard

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One Nation has won the seat of Farrer. The Liberal vote collapsed by 31
points. The journalists filed the numbers. Urban Wronski asks the harder
question: what does a win like this mean when the information ecosystem that
democracy depends on is owned, hollowed out, and burning? A Martin Amis-
flavoured reckoning with journalism, dark money and the Palace of Lies.

Satirical Farrer election scene with oversized ballot box

The Front Fell Off The Coalition

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Written in tribute to the late great John Clarke and his long-suffering straight man Bryan Dawe, whose two chairs and a clipboard remain the gold standard of Australian political satire. The occasion: One Nation’s historic first win in the House of Representatives, the Coalition’s nine-point-eight per cent primary vote in a seat held since 1949, and an exit strategy that turns out to be no exit at all. Going forward.

Australian Parliament House exterior under overcast sky, Canberra.

That Was The Week That Was No. 1, Part One: The Repository of All Wisdom

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Tony Abbott, they whisper, is the answer. One pauses to consider the question. The man who stopped the boats is looking for votes — and the portfolio he has quietly assembled since Warringah showed him the door is not a gaffe reel. It is an ideology rendered as a CV. Fox Corp is the mothership. The GWPF handles the science. Quadrant handles the culture. The Ramsay Centre handles the universities. The Danube Institute handles the international networking. And the Australian Liberal Party, should Abbott have his way, handles the politics. It turns out he was the repository all along.

Two figures in a sparse television studio: one in a dark suit, comfortable and evasive; the other with a notepad, politely relentless.

Phillip Lowe in a Frock

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The RBA has raised the cash rate for the third time in a row. The board voted 8-1. The dissenting member cannot be identified. Someone had a conscience. We just can’t send them a fruit basket. Urban Wronski channels Clarke and Dawe.