Paul J. Berating

Today's Top Stories

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SMH · Rob Harris

The SA Liberals Didn't Lose to One Nation — They Lost to the Void They Created

The South Australian Liberals face potential wipeout at Saturday's state election, with One Nation poised to fill the vacuum — a result that could reshape conservative politics nationally.

A party that stands for nothing eventually falls for anything — and in South Australia, 'anything' turned out to be Pauline Hanson. The Liberals didn't lose these voters; they mislaid them, the way you mislay car keys you stopped using because you forgot where you were driving. One Nation isn't a movement — it's a forwarding address for mail the Liberals stopped collecting. The national party should worry less about Saturday's result and more about why nobody noticed the building was empty.

SMH

The Drawings Have More to Say Than the Drawers of Water

SMH and The Age continue publishing editorial cartoons from Wilcox, Letch, and Golding under federal politics — a quiet admission about where the sharpest analysis now lives.

The press gallery files fifteen hundred words to say what Wilcox says with a pen and a raised eyebrow. That the cartoons run under 'federal politics' isn't an editorial choice — it's a confession. Somewhere between the access journalism and the both-sides hedging, the drawings became the only prose in the building with a spine. When your most incisive political analysis comes without words, the words have a problem.

SMH · Paul Sakkal

Fifty Years of Oil Shock Warnings, and We Built More Motorways

The International Energy Agency has urged countries including Australia to adopt emergency measures — remote work, flight reductions, lower speed limits — to prepare for a potential oil supply disruption, while the Albanese government plays down the threat.

Fifty years since the first oil shock and Australia's strategic response has been to pour more bitumen. The IEA says work from home and slow down; Canberra says she'll be right, then approves another freeway interchange. We didn't ignore the warnings — we paved over them. Every motorway ribbon-cutting since 1973 was a bet that the supply would never stop, placed by governments who won't be around to settle the tab.

Guardian Australia · Tom McIlroy

One Premier, No Opposition, Twenty Percent Grievance

Labor's commanding SA victory and One Nation's surge have reduced the Liberals to parliamentary irrelevance, raising questions about whether effective opposition exists in South Australia at all.

Democracy requires tension between government and opposition the way a bridge requires tension between its cables. Remove one side and you don't get a wider bridge — you get a collapse. Malinauskas now governs a state where the official opposition couldn't fill a cricket team, and the unofficial one thinks parliamentary procedure is a UN conspiracy. The question isn't whether he'll share power. It's whether anyone's left to hold him accountable for not sharing it.

Michael West Media · AAP

Six Tankers Cancelled, Minister Discovers Exciting New Definition of 'Demand'

Six fuel shipments to Australia have been cancelled due to Middle East conflict, but the government insists any shortages reflect demand rather than supply — a distinction increasingly difficult to maintain with three weeks of reserves and no domestic refining capacity to speak of.

Three weeks of reserves isn't a strategic petroleum buffer — it's a long weekend with anxiety. The minister's rebranding of supply failure as demand adjustment is the kind of linguistic innovation that should earn a PhD in euphemism, if not a court summons. We decommissioned our refineries, outsourced our logistics to geopolitics, and now stand blinking at empty berths wondering who forgot to order. Nobody forgot — nobody was asked to remember.

SMH · Peter Hartcher

The Crisis-As-Opportunity Cushion Gets Another Embroidering

Peter Hartcher argues fuel price shocks give Albanese a rare opening to pursue structural reform, but the PM's record suggests crisis management will win over transformation.

Hartcher's thesis — that crisis is opportunity — is the political commentariat's favourite cross-stitch, hung in every gallery kitchen since Rahm Emanuel made it respectable. The pattern never changes: something breaks, a columnist argues it could be transformative, the government applies gaffer tape, and six months later we're told the next crisis is the real one. Albanese doesn't lack opportunity. He lacks the institutional willingness to spend capital on anything that won't poll-test by Thursday.