Bernard Keane says Albanese is a manager, not a leader. Urban Wronski says the rot runs deeper — into the Farrellised machinery of a captured Clayton’s Labor.
Category: The captured state
The Hollow Crown: Australia’s Liberal Party and the Contest for a World That No Longer Exists
The Liberal Party’s leadership circus isn’t just about who wins—it’s about whether Australia can afford the show at all. From Angus Taylor’s Cayman-stained ledgers to Andrew Hastie’s heretical protectionism, the contest for the Liberal crown reveals a party—and a country—grappling with a world order in freefall. Part 1 of a 2-part analysis.
A Dead Parrot
The Liberal Party isn’t just dying—it’s a corpse on life support, clinging to 18 seats as One Nation surges and the Teal wave reshapes Australian politics forever. In this forensic analysis, David Tyler dissects the party’s collapse through the lens of Goldstein’s razor-thin 2025 election—a pyrrhic victory for Tim Wilson that exposed the Liberals’ systemic irrelevance on climate, inequality, and governance. With Roy Morgan polling at 24% and the Nationals in open revolt, is this the end of the road for a party that’s lost the cities, abandoned the margins, and alienated the future?
The Blue Bacillus: How the Liberal Party’s Corporate DNA Became a Fatal Infection
The Coalition’s polling collapse reveals a terminal decline. When corporate DNA meets authoritarian legislation, democracy itself becomes the casualty.
Part Four: “When ‘Historic Reform’ Means Managed Decline”
The final instalment: Did Labor’s environmental reform stop the degradation, or just slow it down enough to look serious while keeping the machinery of destruction functional? We measure the bill against Samuel’s recommendations, synthesise what every independent expert told us, and reveal the four-step pattern of how to manage environmental decline while calling it protection. This is policy capture in a democracy, not through corruption or conspiracy, but through the mundane mechanics of political calculation where industry interests outweigh both scientific advice and majority voter preference.
The Climate Silence. And What Actual Environmental Commitment Looks Like
Australia’s new environment law makes it illegal to consider climate change when approving coal and gas projects. Not an oversight. Not a gap to fix later. Explicit prohibition. This is what corporate capture looks like—and what genuine environmental commitment would require instead.
CLARKE & DAWE do Koalas and Coal
A deadpan Clarke & Dawe dialogue exposing the absurd machinery behind Australia’s love affair with coal, the bureaucratic disappearance of koalas, and a political system that “does not evolve, it thickens.” Dark, sharp, and painfully recognisable.
The Greens’ Genuine Wins, And The Corporate Capture Revealed
The Greens won real concessions on forests. But Labor still won’t consider whether new coal and gas should exist at all. This is how you manage environmental decline while calling it conservation.
THE AI WARS: A TWO-PART INDICTMENT
Thirty billion dollars a year buys server farms instead of hospitals. Urban Wronski on how AI infrastructure spending is eating Australian democracy and why the machinery can’t be stopped—unless we choose to stop it.
THE FISH BOWL: HOW MURDOCH MEDIA AND MINING BILLIONS STRANGLED AUSTRALIA’S CLIMATE FUTURE
Malcolm Turnbull knows the Coalition is trapped in a “fact-free, reality-free culture war” over climate, dictated by Sky News and Murdoch media. He’s right—but what he won’t admit is that state capture extends to Labor too. While Turnbull points fingers at Coalition climate denialism, Labor quietly approves fossil fuel projects that dwarf the Coalition’s rhetoric. Australia is the world’s second-largest exporter of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions, and both major parties are drowning in mining money.
Urban Wronski Writes 