Tag: news

Billion Dollar Balcony Part 2: A Failure to Protect

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.

AUKUS Caucus

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 seeing stones. Australia and its New CIA-Made Friend.

“Pure undistorted truth burns up the world.”Nikolai Berdyaev(Also, apparently, Palantir’s unofficial mission statement.) I. Enter the Magical Spy Orb, Stage Right In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the palantír was a sort of medieval CCTV camera with attitude. A seeing stone that showed you just enough truth to … Continue reading The seeing stones. Australia and its New CIA-Made Friend.

Wronski’s News on Wednesday

Tuesday 10 December revealed Australian politics at its finest: banning teenagers from social media while spending $368 billion on submarines the UK admits it can’t build, from a country that’s already moved on diplomatically. Welcome to the Kingdom of the Unfalsifiable, where policy exists beyond verification, protected by the impenetrable forcefield of good intentions. As Richard Denniss observed, only a fabulously rich country could commit such sums without troubling Treasury or Parliament. We’re not battlers – we’re loaded enough to operate entirely in the realm of political fan fiction.

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.