Category: australian-politics

The Goon Show Goes On

A goon show. That’s what Paul Keating called it. ASIO chief Mike Burgess, a Marina Abramović in drag, runs political theatre dressed as national security, kneecapping the Albanese government’s China diplomacy with strategically timed intelligence bombshells. The pattern repeats, the press reports dutifully, and Australian foreign policy shifts without anyone deciding anything.

Editorial cartoon showing puppet strings controlling MPs inside Parliament House, with coal and gas company logos below.

Net Zero, poor thing, never stood a chance

Net Zero began as a technical phrase in climate science and ended up as a punchline in Australian politics — mangled by MPs who wouldn’t know a carbon cycle from a spin cycle. Here’s what it really means, and how fossil fuel money turned it into a permission slip to keep burning.

Don Farrell: The Godfather of Business as Usual

Jason Koutsoukis’ fawning Saturday Paper profile glosses over the hard truth: Don Farrell represents everything Labor has become. He’s the living fossil record of the Labor Right, the factional godfather who ensures the party never threatens capital’s fundamentals. He rose through the SDA—the union that collaborated with supermarket chains rather than fighting them. He helped orchestrate Kevin Rudd’s removal when the PM threatened mining profits. Now he controls trade policy, ministerial appointments, and the invisible machinery that keeps Labor compliant. The Saturday Paper presents this as diplomatic skill. It’s systematic capture of a workers’ party by those who’ve abandoned workers.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaking, illustrating post-election government scrutiny and accountability concerns

The Government That Isn’t: Labor’s Masterclass in Looking Busy

They gave him 94 seats and a mandate like no other. But barely five months after his landslide re-election, Anthony Albanese’s government is already disappointing voters. From FOI requests plunging to just 25% approval, to $1 million in climate travel in two months, to a housing policy that makes homes less affordable—the second-term complacency is real. As independent MPs note: “We couldn’t go any lower than Morrison, but we have.”

Photorealistic digital artwork depicting Australia’s environmental degradation with Tasmania silhouette overlay, corporate mining CEOs behind parliament wrapped in greenwash banners, a protester behind barbed wire labeled “Anti-Protest Laws,” and a looming super-sized SUV casting shadow over a smoky cityscape.

Australia’s Environmental Policy Crisis: A Closer Look

Labor’s Eco Renaissance: Destroying the Joint, Sensitively As federal parliament resumes its familiar variety show of “Consensus or Catastrophe”, the Labor government unveils another environmental revolution; provided it doesn’t trouble its donors in hi-vis or hard hats. Gina Rinehart’s chequebook, Woodside’s lobbyists, and the captains … Continue reading Australia’s Environmental Policy Crisis: A Closer Look