Paul J. Berating

Today's Top Stories

⚡ Top Story

SMH · Matthew Knott, Lisa Visentin

Marles points to savings after US downgrades AUKUS sub to second-hand version

Australia was expected to buy a mix of new and used submarines from the US, but now the vessels will all be used boats.

We ordered new boats, Washington's decided we'll take the trade-ins, and Marles is on the wharf spruiking the savings. There's a word for a buyer who lets the seller pick the goods, set the price, and still walks away grateful — and it isn't 'customer'. Talleyrand fleeced the great powers from a position of weakness. We can't even fleece the bloke we're paying.

Guardian Australia · Ben Doherty

Marles warns the seabed's a battlefield — then reveals we're buying America's secondhand subs

At the Shangri-La Dialogue, Marles unveiled new AUKUS drone tech to protect undersea cables and declared the seabed a battlefield — while confirming Australia will only receive secondhand US submarines under the deal.

Marles told the Singapore summit the seabed's a battlefield — very Mahan, very stirring — then buried the bit that matters: we're buying America's secondhand submarines. Three hundred-odd billion for boats with the previous owner's coffee rings still on the chart table. Drones to guard the cables, hand-me-downs to guard the continent. We talk like a naval power and shop like it's a wrecker's yard.

SMH · Parnell Palme McGuinness

Labor wants to change the channel. Nobody's holding the remote

A column on the collapse of narrative control: the major parties no longer set the agenda, and Labor's attempt to move past the budget runs into a fragmented media landscape that takes orders from no one.

Time was a Treasurer dropped a budget and owned the week — Hawke could set the agenda over breakfast and have it hold till the evening news. Now it buys you an afternoon before the algorithm wanders off to something shinier. Labor wants to move the conversation along, but nobody handed them the remote. There's a million of them now, and every hand holding one's got a grievance.

Guardian Australia · Dan Jervis-Bardy and Sarah Basford Canales

Can the second coming of Tony Abbott resurrect the Liberal party? Or is it another step toward ‘self-destruction’?

Angus Taylor believes the former PM is uniquely placed to help the party as its new president, but some fear he will render it even more unelectable

Talleyrand said of the restored Bourbons that they'd learned nothing and forgotten nothing — and here's the Liberals dragging back the man their own party knifed in '15. A president rattles the tin and rallies the faithful; he doesn't win the middle. Taylor reckons Abbott's uniquely placed. He is — uniquely placed to remind everyone who left exactly why they did.

SMH · Shane Wright

How more than 1 million landlords will escape negative gearing changes

Overhauling property taxes was key to Jim Chalmers’ federal budget. But grandfathering and carve-outs will leave millions untouched.

Chalmers announces the great property overhaul, then grandfathers a million landlords out of it — reform with the bite pulled in the dental chair. Hawke and Keating quarantined negative gearing in '85 and folded by '87 when the howling started. Chalmers has skipped the howling and gone straight to the fold.

SMH · Michael Bachelard

‘Dynamite’ speech sets one High Court judge against another

A judge has taken aim at people he says want to import “US-style court stacking” to Australia.

Two of the country's seven highest judges feuding in public lectures about whether we'll start stacking the bench American-style — and the beauty of it is we haven't even got the disease yet, we've just imported the anxiety, flat-packed and ready to assemble. The High Court used to settle the argument. Now it's having one at the lectern.