Hemingway knew bankruptcy intimately; both financial and moral. “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asks in The Sun Also Rises. “Two ways,” Mike replies. “Gradually and then suddenly.” He was talking about his own ruin, but he might as well have been describing Australia’s relationship with truth itself.

We’ve been haemorrhaging credibility for years; a leak here, a dodge there, a promise broken, a statistic fudged. But now? Now we’ve drained our account of honesty, and it happened exactly as Hemingway predicted: slowly at first, then all at once. In a rush.

Welcome to Post-Truth Australia, where the lies have become so brazen they’ve stopped pretending to be anything else. Where spin is no longer camouflage but the main event. Where gaslighting is packaged as “common sense” and lies about Net Zero bankrupting the country are broadcast nightly on Sky After Dark.

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The Net Zero Anti-Heroes

But if you want the purest distillation of our post-truth condition, look no further than the Coalition’s latest climate pantomime. Net Zero anti-heroes: For those who think climate targets are a conspiracy, a scam or a bureaucratic boondoggle.

Here’s the scam: two clapped-out parties that nobody wants to vote for have decided their path back to power runs straight through the coalfields. Not around them, not away from them, but through them, like there was no tomorrow. They’re putting the Coal back into the Coalition with such enthusiasm you’d think black rock was the new Bitcoin.

The absurdity is operatic. We must, they tell us with straight faces, bend every effort towards frying the planet by continuing to use fossil fuels as if they’re going out of fashion. Except they’re not going out of fashion in Coalition policy; they’re coming back into fashion, repackaged as “transition fuels” and “energy security” and whatever other euphemisms the focus groups are testing this week.

Pity poor Sussan Ley, desperately trying to kid us that she’s the Liberal Leader and not natty Dave Littleproud. She’s pilloried for the Turnbullian absurdity of letting the Nationals’ tail wag the Liberal dog. Ley’s forced to go hard right on climate denial while simultaneously lying that she still believes in the Paris Agreement.

It’s like watching someone try to tap dance while drowning; technically impressive in its desperation, but ultimately tragic.

Her attempt to kid us she’s in charge “… is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs,” as Dr Johnson observed. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

The Nats have snatched the wheel and aimed the Coalition bus straight at the climate cliff. Ley’s stuck in the dicky seat pretending this is exactly where she wanted to be all along.

Paris? Oh yes, absolutely committed to Paris. Also committed to opening every coal seam in Queensland and building nuclear reactors that won’t exist until 2045. These positions are totally compatible if you just close your eyes and believe hard enough.

It’s mythomania meets climate catastrophe, and the result is a policy position that wouldn’t pass muster in a high school debate, let alone a national parliament.

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The Tasmanian Absurdity

Of course, post-truth politics needs post-truth economics to really sing, which brings us to Tasmania’s new AFL stadium; a modern potlatch ceremony where the island state ceremonially bankrupts itself through lavish gifts to the sporting gods.

The $1.3 billion cost, bandied about on your ABC, is the kind of number that only works if you believe in fairy godmothers and the tooth fairy. It’s political fiction masquerading as a budget estimate; the sort of lowball con that gets announced with a straight face while everyone who can count knows it’s bollocks.

The real story? Perth’s Optus Stadium was budgeted at $1.1 billion and came in at $1.6 billion. Parramatta’s relatively modest rebuild blew past $360 million. And those weren’t built on contaminated former industrial waterfront land that needs massive remediation before you can even think about pouring concrete.

Infrastructure experts not on the government’s Christmas card list are quietly suggesting $1.5-2 billion as realistic. Some brave souls whisper that $2.5 billion isn’t impossible once you factor in the inevitable cost blowouts, the complex maritime site, the infrastructure upgrades, and all those “unforeseen circumstances” that are about as unforeseen as rain in a Tassie winter.

Meanwhile, the AFL, bless their corporate hearts, has graciously chipped in $15 million. Fifteen million. For a project that’ll cost billions. They’re not funding a stadium; they’re charging Tasmania an extortion fee for the privilege of joining the big boys’ club.

Here’s the economic vandalism in context: Tasmania’s entire state budget runs around $8 billion annually. They plan to blow somewhere between 15-30% of their annual budget, or more, on a venue that’ll host maybe a dozen AFL games a year plus the odd concert.

Like the great potlatch ceremonies of the Pacific Northwest, where chiefs would give away or destroy vast wealth to demonstrate their status, Tasmania is preparing to immolate its economic future on the altar of sporting prestige.

The state’s debt is climbing, the credit rating agencies are sharpening their pencils, hospitals are understaffed, roads are crumbling, and essential services are run on fumes.

But sure, let’s build a waterfront palace for football while the state’s infrastructure collapses like a deck of cards in a stiff breeze.

The truly criminal part? Every politician, bureaucrat, and AFL executive involved knows these numbers are fiction. They know it’ll blow out. They know Tasmania can’t afford it. They know it’s economic self-immolation. But they’re all committed to the lie because backing out now would mean admitting the whole thing was a con from the start; and that would require something our political class stopped doing years ago: telling the truth.

So they stand there, reciting their lines about “opportunity” and “legacy” while Tasmania prepares to mortgage its future for a stadium it can barely afford to talk about, let alone build. This ceremonial giving, this potlatch for the AFL, will leave Tasmania in debt-ridden penury, a cautionary tale about the difference between prestige and prosperity.

They can barely afford to talk about it; and you know how cheap talk is these days. Cheaper than chips, really. Though even chips cost more than they used to, which is another conversation we’re not having honestly. Maybe they should build the stadium out of coal. At least then the Coalition would chip in more than the AFL.

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Stand By Your BAN

Which brings us to the latest instalment in our post-truth festival: the social media ban for teenagers. Anika Wells, our Communications Minister, stands firm on the bridge of the Tik-Tok-Titanic, assuring us her craft is unsinkable even as the icy water laps at her ankles.

“Stand By Your Ban,” is her anthem; channelling Tammy Wynette for the digital age. Because if there’s one thing we’ve learnt, it’s that when technology policy meets political theatre, facts become optional accessories.

The bill wouldn’t work in an iron lung; an apt metaphor for legislation that’s supposed to help children breathe free from digital harm but would more likely suffocate them in bureaucratic futility. Age verification that can’t be verified. Enforcement that can’t be enforced. Privacy protections that protect nothing. VPNs that render the whole exercise moot before breakfast.

But we’re not meant to notice these inconvenient truths. We’re meant to applaud the gesture, the intention, the theatrical performance of Doing Something About The Children. Never mind that the something being done is somewhere between useless and actively counterproductive. And in some cases may lead to harm.

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The Mythomania Machine

This is mythomania at industrial scale; the compulsive, pathological fabrication of narratives that bear no relationship to reality but serve some immediate political need.

We’ve cranked up the machinery, and the porkie-pies are rolling out like Don sausages from the Castlemaine factory, each one just that bit more porkier than the last.

The Coalition’s “Net Zero Heroes” who want to dig up every tonne of coal in the country. The potlatch stadium that will “transform” Tasmania through ceremonial bankruptcy. The social media ban that will “protect” our children. The assurances that everything’s under control, that experts have been consulted, that due diligence has been done.

It’s all theatre. Expensive, destructive theatre that we’re forced to attend, ticket-holders in a performance where the script was written by people who stopped caring about truth years ago. Sussan Ley knows it’s theatre. Anika Wells knows it’s theatre. The Tasmanian politicians nervously watching their credit rating know it’s theatre.

But the performance must go on, because the alternative; admitting that climate policy is captured by fossil fuel interests, that the stadium is economic madness, that the social media ban is technological fantasy, would require something our political class has forgotten how to do: tell the truth.

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The Post-Truth Condition

Heidegger wrote about authentic existence – Eigentlichkeit – the courage to face reality as it is, rather than fleeing into comfortable illusions. We’ve chosen the opposite path. We’ve constructed an entire political culture around the avoidance of uncomfortable truths, around the substitution of narrative for reality, around the belief that if we just tell the story convincingly enough, it might somehow become true.

It won’t. Physics remains undefeated. Economics keeps score. And the climate? The climate doesn’t care about your rebrand, your spin, or your focus groups.

Eventually, gradually and then suddenly, the bill comes due.

Tasmania will build its stadium, or more likely, half-build it before running out of money, leaving a concrete monument to hubris rusting in the rain, the failed potlatch of a broke state that gave everything to sport and got dudded in return.

The social media ban will pass, fail, and be quietly forgotten while politicians move on to the next performative gesture.

And the Coalition’s Net Zero Heroes will keep digging coal while the planet keeps warming, each lie compounding the last until the whole edifice of denial collapses under its own weight.

And Australia will continue its slow-then-sudden journey deeper into post-truth territory, where feelings trump facts, where gesture substitutes for substance, where we’ve learnt to love the lie because it’s more comfortable than the truth.

Stand by your BAN, indeed. Stand by your coal. Stand by your crumbling stadium and your impossible promises.

Just don’t expect any of them to stand by you when the reckoning comes.

Gradually, then suddenly-just as Hemingway said.

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