Google’s AI Overviews are strip-mining independent online writing. It’s institutionalised theft. And the regulatory framework is standing in the rubble, blinking.
Tag: Albanese government
That Was The Week That Was, No. 1 — Part Two: The RBA Show
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.
For Australia The Price is Always Right
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.
Bondi’s Blood, Herzog’s Shield: How Australia’s Grief was Hijacked for Geopolitics
The Bondi massacre exposed more than a failure of gun laws. It revealed a political class willing to fold a community’s grief into a diplomatic script—inviting a leader accused of incitement to genocide to stand as the symbol of Australia’s solidarity. This is the story of how sorrow was weaponised, dissent was crushed, and the rule of law was suspended in the name of comfort.
As Trump Threatens Weekend Strike on Iran, Albanese Pretends Pine Gap Isn’t Complicit
Albanese’s Iran Illusion: How Australia Sleepwalks into Someone Else’s War While our federal government waffles on about rules based order, Iran is rewriting the rules of modern warfare. Trump is threatening regime-change. The Strait of Hormuz has become a kill box where $13 billion aircraft … Continue reading As Trump Threatens Weekend Strike on Iran, Albanese Pretends Pine Gap Isn’t Complicit
“Nothing to See Here”: How Australia’s Terror Watchdogs Missed Bondi — Or Were Told to Look Away
Two men spend 28 days in a cash-only Davao hotel linked to ISIS activity, then massacre 15 Australians. AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett says they acted alone. With ASIO’s sweeping powers and metadata dragnet, this wasn’t missed—it was ignored. The question is why, and who gave the stand-down order.
AI: The Emperor’s New Algorithm, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Recognise the Same Old Con
After billions in development, Microsoft quietly slashed expectations for Copilot, its AI wonderchild that can’t reliably perform basic tasks. The pattern is grimly familiar: massive investment chasing promised returns that never appear, followed by market correction when reality intrudes. But this bubble comes with a uniquely toxic twist—AI’s environmental cost accelerates the very climate crisis it claims it will solve.
Data centers now gulp enough water annually to supply hundreds of families while generating marketing copy riddled with errors. Training GPT-3 alone evaporated 700,000 liters of clean freshwater. Meanwhile, Australia’s Albanese government subsidizes data center expansion while manufacturing collapses, emissions targets slip through accounting tricks, and workers face automation without security.
The millenarian faith in AI’s salvation delays the unglamorous work we actually need: rapid decarbonization, public investment in resilience, and democratic reform to counter corporate capture. Time to stop waiting for miracles.
CAUGHT IN THE CRUNCH: The Surveillance State Comes to Your Local Supermarket
Walk into any Coles outlet today and you’re not just buying milk. You’re feeding a surveillance machine processing 10 billion rows of data through Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies. In early 2024, Coles signed a deal to deploy Palantir’s “Foundry” platform across more than 840 stores, analysing every transaction, every worker’s movement, every shift allocation. Workers across Victoria are monitored, with one shelf-stacker in Ballarat saying: “The computer knows where I am before my manager does.”
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
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.
Urban Wronski Writes 