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.
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.
One Nation’s David Farley has taken the once‑impregnable Coalition seat of Farrer. But with Gina Rinehart’s funding and the party’s rural base, who really owns the populist rage?
The Reserve Bank cut rates. Jim Chalmers was pleased. He was, if anything, a little too pleased, the controlled smile of a man who has been waiting a long time for something to go right.
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.
One Nation calls itself the battler’s friend. Gina Rinehart’s plane, the NRA’s phone calls and Big Coal’s Senate votes tell a different story. Howard sowed the tares.
Australia has signed up to another war without debate and without clarity. The costs are already visible, in rising prices, strained supply chains and a deepening entanglement that blurs the line between ally and participant.
The Albanese government gives us the mushroom treatment. Keeps us in the dark and feeds us BS. This week, while a US-Israeli war of questionable legality engulfs the Middle East and Pine Gap hums away in the desert night, Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong delivered a bravura homage to John Cage: all performance, all silence, no content whatsoever.
Imagine Sarah, nurse at St Vincents, on the Number 96 tram, Melbournedusk bruising purple outside the windows. Twelve hours done. Her navyscrubs are faded and soft, worn to the shape of her, the way asoldier’s fatigues eventually become a second skin. She doesn’t looklike someone … Continue reading The CFMEU Setup: How Workers Get Mugged in an Election Year
On a pepper‑sprayed night in Sydney, Palestinian grief is kettled while Iranian protests are feted as “democratic awakening.” This article traces how Australia’s selective compassion, media framing and think‑tank spin conscript us into the US military‑industrial script for Iran and the region.
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