Michael West Media · Rex Patrick
The Albanese Government claims the Freedom of Information system costs too much, but Rex Patrick argues it's the secrecy that's bleeding the public.
Every government discovers FOI is too expensive the moment they have something to hide. Whitlam wanted sunlight, Hawke legislated it, and now Albanese reckons the bulb's costing too much to leave on. Mate, the cost isn't the searching — it's what you find when you stop.
SBS News
Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has flagged 'legal rules and new management' of the Strait of Hormuz, framing tighter Iranian control as a regional benefit. The strait carries roughly forty per cent of seaborne crude.
'New management' and 'legal rules' for the world's busiest oil chokepoint — the same vocabulary every protection racket has used since the Borgias hired their first accountant.
SMH · Rob Harris
Gina Rinehart's plane gift to One Nation is treated as a scandal, but cultivating political influence has been the family business since Lang Hancock was running the Pilbara.
Hancock's daughter bankrolling Hanson is the most natural transaction in Australian politics — old money buying noisy populism the way you'd buy a sheepdog. The shock isn't the jet. The shock is anyone pretending the iron ore set ever did politics any other way.
Spectator Australia · Douglas Murray
Douglas Murray attends the White House correspondents' dinner, gets shouted at by protesters, and mistakes the experience for journalism.
Douglas Murray went to the correspondents' dinner and came back with a thousand words about how mean the protesters were. The American press spent the evening toasting itself in a Hilton ballroom while the country it covers comes apart at the seams, and the Spectator's takeaway is that someone shouted at Douglas on the footpath. Mencken would have been inside throwing the bread rolls.
Spectator Australia · Tim Shipman
When Morgan McSweeney concluded his evidence on Tuesday to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee about the Mandelson affair, a senior…
The post Is the country ready for Chancellor Ed Miliband? appeared first on The Spectator Australia.
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The Spectator's now floating Miliband as Chancellor while the same magazine spent last week explaining Starmer can't run a chook raffle. Pick a lane, mate. You can't run hit-pieces on the captain on Tuesday and speculative cabinet reshuffles on Friday — that's not commentary, that's a man rearranging the deckchairs and selling tickets to both ends of the boat.
Spectator Australia · Lisa Haseldine
Britain's First Sea Lord Gwyn Jenkins names Russia as the gravest threat to UK security, even as Trump's Iran campaign enters its third month.
The First Sea Lord says Russia's the gravest threat while Trump's bombing Iran into its third month and the Spectator's running it under a stack of stories about Scottish migrants and OPEC exits. Every admiral in NATO has the same line ready for the same magazines — Jellicoe at least had a fleet to back the rhetoric.
Spectator Australia · Philip Patrick
Philip Patrick discovers an SNP minister advocating for migration in a country with a shrinking population, and treats basic demographic arithmetic like a constitutional outrage.
The Spectator's discovered Scotland might want more migrants and treats it like Sturgeon's protégé just confessed to arson. Mairi McAllan says the country needs people to fill the houses, run the wards, work the farms — Patrick reckons that's lambast-worthy. Mate, Scotland's losing population the way a leaky bucket loses water, and the Spectator's writing think pieces about the bucket.
Spectator Australia · Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman files another in the Spectator's rolling series declaring Keir Starmer politically dead, this time keyed to a final PMQs of the session.
The Spectator's fifth piece this month declaring Starmer finished — at this rate they'll have buried him more times than Lazarus and with less reason to expect a comeback. The British commentariat has confused having an opinion with having a clock.
Guardian Australia · Ben Doherty, Josh Butler and Nino Bucci
Interim report into the Bondi attack finds NSW Police failed to complete a comprehensive risk assessment for the Chanukah by the Sea festival, despite the Jewish community flagging a high threat.
The community told the coppers it was high risk. The coppers didn't finish the risk assessment. Fifteen people are dead and the royal commission's headline finding is that someone should've ticked the box. Fitzgerald exposed a system. This one's exposed a clipboard.
Michael West Media · Stephanie Tran and Kim Wingerei
The Royal Commission's interim report lands with recommendations in hand and 'social cohesion' deferred to a later instalment — the chapter where the actual question gets postponed.
An interim report that won't say the word the headline writers won't say either. Three hundred pages of recommendations and the hard question — 'social cohesion' — saved for the sequel. Fitzgerald named the coppers. Costigan named the dockers. This commission's mastered the art of the noun-free inquiry.
Spectator Australia · Geoff Russ
A Canadian writer in an Australian magazine warns North America about Indigenous land claims. The geography alone tells you everything about the politics.
The Spectator Australia's running a piece by a Canadian about Canadian land claims, framed as a warning to North America, published in Sydney. Mate, the only thing more colonial than the original dispossession is a magazine in Surry Hills clutching its pearls about the natives in British Columbia.
Michael West Media · AAP
Meta has revised its capital expenditure outlook, lifting the projected full-year range to $US125 billion to $US145 billion from a previous estimate of $US115b.
Meta's lifting capex to a hundred and forty-five billion American to chase the AI rapture, which is more than the GDP of New Zealand spent on graphics cards by a company that can't keep teenagers off Instagram. Zuckerberg's bet is that if you pour enough silicon on the problem, God shows up. The shareholders are clapping because the alternative is admitting nobody knows what any of this is for.
Spectator Australia · Dimitri Burshtein and Peter Swan
Australia is in the longest run of falling per capita output since the Australian Bureau of Statistics began publishing the…
The post Australia is trying to drink its way to fiscal sobriety appeared first on The Spectator Australia.
What to read next: Australia is fast becoming a failed socialist state | Command and control Australia | Australia’s most dangerous word | Australia is not Argentina. Yet.
Per capita output falling for the longest stretch since the ABS started keeping score, and the Treasury's answer is to count the GST receipts from the bottle shop and call it growth. Howard left a surplus. Costello left a surplus. This mob's left a hangover and a receipt for the schooner that caused it.
SMH · Abby Sewell
Syrian officials say Australian women and children linked to IS families had flights to Damascus but were blocked from boarding after Canberra refused to facilitate their return.
Syrian officials say the women had flights booked and Canberra pulled the rug. Three years of 'we're working on it' and the answer turns out to be 'we're not.' The kids didn't choose the camp, didn't choose the parents, didn't choose the passport — but they've been issued the sentence anyway. Citizenship's a contract until it's politically inconvenient, and then it's a suggestion.
