Tag: political satire

Satirical illustration of a large cartoon dog in the Oval Office, its wagging tail scattering military documents, while a small figure holds its leash and an aircraft carrier is visible through the window against a blood-red sky.

America’s Wag-the-Dog Moment

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A flailing administration, a nuclear pretext recycled from the WMD workshop of 2003, and an Israel that appears to be setting the tempo of a potential world war. Before the missiles fly, Urban Wronski asks the question Washington’s press won’t: is this about Iran — or about saving Trump from himself?

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS MUM’S LOGIN: How Labor’s Social Media Ban Became a Masterclass in Government Theatre

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Christmas 2025, and Australia’s teenagers are unwrapping their presents: new VPNs, borrowed parental logins, and AI-generated profile photos. Two weeks into Labor’s world-first social media ban, and it’s already a monument to performative governance. Meanwhile, the minister who should be celebrating is in hiding over travel rorts, and the policy architect has vanished into an expenses scandal. Welcome to government theatre at its finest.

Wronski’s News on Wednesday

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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

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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.

A symbolic political cartoon showing a giant set of unbalanced scales: a huge lump of coal pushed down by disembodied suit-sleeved hands labelled “Influence”, “Access”, “Stakeholders”, and “Donors”, outweighing a group of anxious cartoon koalas on the other tray. A faceless bureaucratic figure at a podium marked “Department of Balanced Outcomes” gestures proudly toward the clearly tilted scales.

CLARKE & DAWE do Koalas and Coal

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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.