One Nation’s David Farley has taken the once‑impregnable Coalition seat of Farrer. But with Gina Rinehart’s funding and the party’s rural base, who really owns the populist rage?
Tag: politics
O Quel Cul T’as: The Pat, The Politics and The Perfectly Fake Marriage
In 1969, Kenneth Tynan named a nude revue after a French pun about a woman’s backside. In 2026, the forty-seventh president of the United States provided the perfect sequel. The gesture lasted less than a second. The politics behind it have been building for decades.
AUKUS: A Black Comedy in Several Ruinously Expensive Acts
The Palace knew about Kerr’s plan to dismiss Whitlam. Whitlam did not. Fifty-one years later, the same Crown is phoning the American president to sell AUKUS. Urban Wronski on the loyalty that never changed.
Is Trump Bullet-proof?
A man called Cole Tomas Allen arrived at the White House
Correspondents’ Dinner with a shotgun, a pistol, knives, and a
manifesto. He called himself the Friendly Federal Assassin. He
did not kill Trump. But by midnight, the president was invoking
Lincoln, the theology machine was running, and the Epstein
Inspector General probe had slid quietly to the bottom of the
news agenda. Again.
The Lovely War
Donald Trump threatens Iran the way he once threatened a recalcitrant steak: same wounded, flinty, infant-king fury. A working homage to Martin Amis — on the Epstein flights, the six-billion-dollar goon squad, the taunting of a proud civilisation, and a nine-year-old girl in Minab waiting for the water that is her birthright. The infant-king has other plans.
The Holy War on the Holy See
Pete Hegseth has a muscular theology. The Pope has Augustine on his side and refugees on his schedule. The Vice President has been explaining Just War theory to an Augustinian. Clarke and Dawe have two chairs, a lanyard marked “Office of Sacred Communications,” and the truth hiding in plain sight. Urban Wronski referees.
Caps Off: How Mark Hammond’s Appointment Completes Labor’s Capture by Uncle Sam and the AUKUS Boondoggle
Albanese grins in his USS Vermont cap. Hammond smiles in his Chief of Navy lid. The submariners have taken the wheel of Australian defence — $368 billion, phantom crews, obsolete technology, and a slow bicycle ride to yesterday’s wars. Urban Wronski on how Labor completed its capture by Uncle Sam. With a little help from Clarke and Dawe.
The Biggest Peacetime Increase in Our Nation’s History
Defence Minister Richard Marles announces Australia’s largest peacetime defence spending hike while the Geelong refinery burns and fuel reserves hit five weeks. A deadpan account of spending better, NATO accounting, and submarines arriving in the 2040s.
DeadWood Marles: Australia’s Liberal in Drag
He is, in the most precise political sense available, a Liberal in drag. Same tough talk on alliances and deterrence. Same fondness for American hardware and AUKUS largesse. Wrapped in just enough factional red to keep the true believers satisfied. All suit, no spark. And a remarkable talent for making national security sound like a mildly confusing numbers meeting that ran somewhat overtime. Urban Wronski profiles Richard “DeadWood” Marles, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence.
Trump is not The Messiah, just a very Naughty Boy
When Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as a divine healer — haloed, beatific, hovering over the sick like a Sistine saviour — the cult of self had finally annexed the cult of Christ. A satirical dispatch, written in homage to Martin Amis, from the gilded ballroom-temple of the Trumpian court: where the joke is on all of us.
Urban Wronski Writes 