Pauline Hanson wags parliament for Mar-a-Lago while One Nation surges to 15%. From Tampa to Family Court, how Howard’s bastard child betrays her voters.
Category: Commentary
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.
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.
The Melbourne Cup: A Carnival Of Inequality, Absurdity and Status
The Melbourne Cup bills itself as “the race that stops a nation.” But what stops: a celebration of sport and equality, or a yearly demonstration of who holds real power in Australia? This forensic examination reveals a dying spectacle built on inequality, corruption, and animal cruelty, now facing its greatest threat: a generation rewired for instant dopamine hits.
The Liberals’ Death Rattle: Net Zero
The Liberal Party is not in recovery. It is in entropy. Its long devotion to neoliberal fantasy has hollowed out its own voter base, surrendered its autonomy to Murdoch, and trapped it inside Sky News performance art. The Teals did not defeat the Liberals. Reality did. Labor now inherits a broken ecosystem. The only question is whether it preserves the ruins or builds the replacement civilisation waiting on the other side.
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.
The Worst Deal in History: Why Mining Has Ransacked Australia While the Press Looked Away
How Australia became the world’s cautionary tale in resource management. The mining industry didn’t steal our wealth. We handed it over. The press, owned by the same mining interests since 1923, made sure we never asked why.
They Blew Up 46,000 Years for $135 Million: How Mining Is Devouring Itself
They blew up 46,000 years of human history for $135 million worth of iron ore. And it was legal. From Juukan Gorge to 80,000 abandoned toxic sites, Australia’s mining industry is cannibalising its own future while shipping 86% of profits offshore.
The AUKUS Delusion: Buying Yesterday’s Technology for Tomorrow’s War That Won’t Happen
Australia has a tragic genius for repeating its strategic mistakes. Part 2 of Urban Wronski’s AUKUS series traces how bipartisan cowardice; from Morrison’s photo-ops to Albanese’s deference; turned dependence into doctrine and loyalty into lunacy.
Ask Not What You Can Do for One Nation—But What Has One Nation Ever Done for Anybody?
If Helen of Troy had the face that launched a thousand ships, Pauline Hanson has the face that launched a thousand chips. But the real story isn’t about Hanson at all—it’s about Long John Howard, who stole her racism in the 1990s, laundered it through the language of sovereignty and security, and left both major parties trapped in a political theatre he built thirty years ago.
One Nation polls at 14% between elections but collapsed to 6.4% in May—the evergreen boost that never makes it to the ballot box. Yet even with Anthony Albanese’s historic landslide, Labor still governs within Howard’s frame, still talks tough on “border security,” still uses his language. The government changes. The script endures.
From Barnaby Joyce playing pantaloon to Hanson serving up warmed-over resentment with extra chicken salt, this is how we all ended up living in Howard’s Australia.
Urban Wronski Writes 