Tag: Australian Politics

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.

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.”

Composite editorial image showing Australian leaders on a glossy stage beside a model submarine and US flag, with faded historical scenes of Gallipoli, Vietnam and Iraq in the background.

The Tyranny of Delusion: How Australia Keeps Fighting Yesterday’s Wars

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AUKUS is the culmination of our imperial hangover. It combines obsolete technology in an age of drones with geography that defeats its purpose, industrial bottlenecks that guarantee delay, and a strategic rationale contradicted by its authors. Political cowardice is dressed as resolve. We are spending a generation’s wealth on submarines we probably will not get, cannot crew, cannot fuel, to fight wars Washington has already priced out of its plans.

Handing Over the Till, Paying the Tab

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Anthony Albanese flew to Washington to secure Australia’s critical minerals supply chains. He returned having signed away control of them. In the Cabinet Room, Trump publicly humiliated our ambassador moments before signing an $8.5 billion framework built on Letters of Interest, aspirational price floors, and submarines that may never arrive.

Captured State: How Corporate Australia Wrote Labor’s Climate Surrender

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The real tragedy isn’t just pissweak climate policy—it’s the systematic corruption of democratic governance itself. We’ve cultivated a political class more eager to curry favour with the titans of industry than to tackle the programs that might actually drag our collective arses out of the fire. Cabinet ministers book more face-time with fossil fuel executives than climate scientists. Policy frameworks emerge from industry “working groups,” not public consultation.