Paul J. Berating

Today's Top Stories

⚡ Top Story

Barnaby Joyce trips up on Sky News over foreign ownership ban

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce was caught short on Sky News last night when Andrew Bolt pressed him for details of the party’s call to outlaw foreign ownership of housing in Australia.

Joyce went on the most sympathetic couch in the country and still couldn't tell Bolt how the foreign ownership ban would actually work. Foreigners already can't touch your existing terrace — the FIRB's run that fence for decades. The real bottleneck's the planning office, not Beijing, but you can't fit a planning office on a bumper sticker. Lang knew his numbers cold. This bloke went looking for his in the ad break.

SMH · Paul Sakkal

Hanson's bulletproof — right up until someone asks a follow-up question

Hanson projects supreme confidence buoyed by an online right-wing following, but a podcast interview exposed soft spots — and the Liberals are circling because she's taking their voters.

Hanson's confidence runs on an online mob that never asks a follow-up. Press her on a podcast and it folds like a card table — and Taylor's circling, which tells you she's pinched the voters he used to call his own.

SMH · Shane Wright

RBA boss says economy can weather war and avoid recession

Analysts have raised concerns the country could face a recession and stagflation due to the Iran war. But Michele Bullock is not one of them.

A central banker promising no recession is a weather bureau forbidden from forecasting rain — the moment Bullock says the word out loud, she causes the thing she's denying. Keating had the ticker to call his the recession we had to have. This one's stuck swearing it's fine weather while half the analysts are already under umbrellas.

SMH · Natassia Chrysanthos

‘Avoiding scrutiny’: Coalition and Greens fight to delay Labor’s major budget bills

The Senate could team up to derail Labor’s agenda, with the Coalition seeking a longer tax inquiry while the Greens want more time to investigate sweeping changes to the NDIS.

Fabius Maximus delayed Hannibal until the threat wore itself out — and the Senate's worked out you can do the same to a budget bill and call it scrutiny. Coalition wants longer on tax. Greens want longer on the NDIS. Two mobs that agree on nothing, holding hands at the one lever that does nothing. An inquiry's a paddock where a bill goes to forget the way home.

SMH · Brittany Busch, Shane Wright

Four in five cigarettes are now illegal — and the sewers prove it

Wastewater analysis shows Australians never stopped smoking — up to four in five cigarettes are now illicit, suggesting tobacco excise has built a black market rather than a quit rate.

Tax a packet to forty bucks and act stunned when it's selling out the back of the servo for fifteen. Sales dropped, so Canberra declared the nation cured — meanwhile the sewers are full of nicotine and the tobacconists are burning across Melbourne. America priced vice out of existence in 1920 and handed the trade to Al Capone. We've done it with excise and called it public health.