Category: Political Comment

Two figures in a sparse television studio: one in a dark suit, comfortable and evasive; the other with a notepad, politely relentless.

Phillip Lowe in a Frock

The RBA has raised the cash rate for the third time in a row. The board voted 8-1. The dissenting member cannot be identified. Someone had a conscience. We just can’t send them a fruit basket. Urban Wronski channels Clarke and Dawe.

Editorial illustration in the style of George Grosz and Honoré Daumier: A bloated, orange-toned figure in a suit stands center frame with arms raised in a 'V,' surrounded by a spiraling vortex of FBI files and court documents. Dusty child’s shoes lie at his feet, while a shadowed congressman observes from the side against a background of television static

Is Trump Bullet-proof?

A man called Cole Tomas Allen arrived at the White House
Correspondents’ Dinner with a shotgun, a pistol, knives, and a
manifesto. He called himself the Friendly Federal Assassin. He
did not kill Trump. But by midnight, the president was invoking
Lincoln, the theology machine was running, and the Epstein
Inspector General probe had slid quietly to the bottom of the
news agenda. Again.

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 A suited interviewer sits in a grey armchair facing a second chair occupied by a figure whose head has been replaced by a framed oil painting of an LNG tanker labelled AUS-INC.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 weathered man in a high-visibility orange work shirt sits in the cab of an old ute at a sparse rural petrol station, looking down at a long paper receipt in both hands. A diesel bowser and a brick servo building are visible through the windscreen. The landscape beyond is flat, dry and overcast.

THE RECEIPT Part One: Where Does the Money Go?

At the Ararat servo, a bloke stares at a $255 diesel receipt and says nothing. That silence is the sound of geopolitics arriving in the western districts. Jim Chalmers is in Washington being told to tighten his belt while Iran runs a tollbooth on the world’s oil supply and Woodside counts its war dividend. Urban Wronski follows the money.