No jackboots needed. Australia imports Britain’s polite censorship: journalists “voluntarily” self-silence on national security. FOI docs reveal the blueprint. Is democracy disappearing under manners?
Stand By Your Ban: A Post-Truth Reflection
Welcome to Post-Truth Australia, where the lies have become so brazen they’ve stopped pretending to be anything else. The Coalition’s “Net Zero Heroes” want to dig up every tonne of coal in the country. Tasmania’s preparing a modern potlatch ceremony – ceremonially bankrupting itself with a stadium that’ll cost billions while the AFL chips in $15 million. And our Communications Minister stands firm on a social media ban that wouldn’t work in an iron lung. It’s mythomania at industrial scale, and as Hemingway knew: we go broke gradually, then suddenly.
Ban It and They’ll Thank Us Later: Labor’s Teen Social Media Panic
While Finland invests twenty years teaching its children to think critically about media, Australia reaches for symbolic gestures and declares them progress. Within days, a new law regulating social media will take effect; one already destined to fail in its stated aim of protecting young … Continue reading Ban It and They’ll Thank Us Later: Labor’s Teen Social Media Panic
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.
How Australia’s “Landmark” Environmental Reform Got Captured
Five years after the Samuel Review exposed catastrophic failures in Australia’s environmental laws, Labor has delivered reforms that every major independent environmental organisation says fall dangerously short. Part One examines what Samuel actually recommended versus what we got, featuring damning assessments from the Environmental Defenders Office, Climate Council, ACF, Greenpeace, and WWF-Australia. When every credible environmental voice in Australia identifies the same fundamental flaws, that’s not ideology. That’s evidence.
PART TWO: THE SILICON LEASH
Australia’s teen social media ban was sold as child protection. In reality, it crystallises platform power over basic infrastructure. Meta writes the rules. Snapchat implements ConnectID. Parliament ratifies what’s already been decided. This isn’t regulation—it’s regulatory capture dressed up as safety. And the pattern repeats everywhere: gig work, aged care, digital advertising. We’re becoming silicon serfs to a billionaire tech oligarchy that already runs too much of the world.
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.
