Category: Political Comment

The Goon Show Goes On

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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

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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.

Laptop with a fake “Net Zero 2050” slide sitting on a cracked boardroom table with a dying plant beside it.

The Liberals’ Death Rattle: Net Zero

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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

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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.

Editorial cartoon of Sussan Ley conducting beside a collapsing grand piano labelled “Coalition.” Sheet music titled “Murdoch Media” flies into the air and morphs into social media icons including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, symbolising the decline of the old media orchestra.

Whither the Coalition?

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Once “the natural party of government, the Liberal–National Coalition has become a federation of feuding tribes. Factional decay, Murdoch’s fading megaphone and an attention economy allergic to policy have left it stranded between yesterday’s media and tomorrow’s electorate.

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

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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.”