Tag: National Security

Billion Dollar Balcony Part 2: A Failure to Protect

· 2 Comments ·

Australia’s intelligence agencies had the data, the powers and the warnings. What they lacked was the capacity, or the incentive, to act. Part 2 examines how lawful firearms, foreign travel to militant regions and prior extremist scrutiny failed to trigger intervention before fifteen people were killed at Bondi. Surveillance was abundant. Prevention was absent.

The Billion-Dollar Balcony: ASIO’s Sovereignty Failure

· 4 Comments ·

When another nation’s intelligence operatives are called in to assist with a domestic security catastrophe, the admission is plain: our billion-dollar spymasters cannot clean up their own mess. The Bondi massacre exposes not just intelligence failure, but the hollowing out of Australian sovereignty itself. ASIO’s budget exceeds $700 million annually, yet perpetrators “known to authorities” strike with impunity while the surveillance state watches from elsewhere.

AUKUS Caucus

· 5 Comments ·

Australia has built a $368 billion cargo cult and called it strategy. The AUKUS Caucus offers money, bases and sovereignty in exchange for submarines that do not exist, built by shipyards that cannot deliver, on timelines that belong to fantasy. The only thing arriving on schedule is the bill.

The Goon Show Goes On

· 5 Comments ·

A goon show. That’s what Paul Keating called it. ASIO chief Mike Burgess, a Marina Abramović in drag, runs political theatre dressed as national security, kneecapping the Albanese government’s China diplomacy with strategically timed intelligence bombshells. The pattern repeats, the press reports dutifully, and Australian foreign policy shifts without anyone deciding anything.

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

· 2 Comments ·

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.”

Handing Over the Till, Paying the Tab

· 4 Comments ·

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.