Category: australian-politics

A dark expressionist illustration of a vast bureaucratic machine extending mechanical arms bearing legal documents toward silhouetted human figures below, representing Australia's legal apparatus used against whistleblowers and independent journalists.

The Invisible Press, Part 2

· Leave a comment ·

The Australian Harrow does not use needles. It uses bail conditions, suppression orders, national security legislation, and pre-trial process that can run for years before a single day in open court. David McBride got six years in gaol for telling the truth. Bernard Collaery was prosecuted for defending his client. The penal colony never really ended. It merely changed its dress code.

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

· 1 Comment ·

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

· 1 Comment ·

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.

A Clarke and Dawe style television interview set. A suited interviewer sits in a grey armchair facing a second chair occupied by a figure whose head has been replaced by a framed oil painting of an LNG tanker labelled AUS-INC. and LIQUEFIED SOVEREIGNTY. Small plastic figurines of cheering people stand at the bottom of the frame.

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.

A dark editorial cartoon showing a self-satisfied bureaucrat at a desk marked “Sustainability Taskforce” signing documents while a exhausted woman with an NDIS appeal folder sits in a waiting room behind him, and through the window a nuclear submarine sits in dry dock with a $425 billion price tag.

Governments Just Get On With the Job: Mark Butler’s Razor Gang and the NDIS They Want You to Forget

· 3 Comments ·

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.