Tag: Jim Chalmers

A federal budget that delivers $250 a year to workers while handing $16.3 billion to fossil fuel companies.

The Budget That Will Not Save You

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The 2026-27 federal budget breaks two election promises, grows fossil fuel subsidies faster than the NDIS, hands $250 a year to workers, and approves gas drilling until 2080. Jim Chalmers was right that the can had been kicked far enough. He has been less forthcoming about who was doing the kicking.

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

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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.

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?

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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.