Paul J. Berating

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.

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.

Blaming Trump for Australian inflation is like blaming the weather for a leaky roof. We've been a price-taker on fuel since Menzies decided refining was someone else's problem, and every treasurer since has called that strategy a feature. The bowser writes monetary policy now. Martin Place just takes notes.

Home Affairs is shedding hundreds because the budget's tight, which is the same building that grew like a mushroom under Dutton on the promise that border security needed every warm body it could find. Turns out the empire was disposable after all. Natural attrition is what you call sacking people when you don't want to hold a press conference about it.

Charles flies to Washington to remind Congress that disagreement shouldn't become divorce — the constitutional monarch reduced to a marriage counsellor for an empire that already filed the papers. The Spectator calls it authoritative. Authoritative is what you say when you mean please.

Novelty cheques, a sexy plane, and a stoush with the Guardian — Hanson's discovered you can run the country's third-place party as a Variety Club telethon. The cheque's the giveaway. Real money doesn't arrive in cardboard.

Malcolm Roberts writing about the battle for conservatism is like a bloke who set the kitchen on fire offering tips on the smoke alarm. Farrer's by-election is a faction fight dressed up as a philosophical struggle — One Nation, Liberals, and the Nationals all claiming the same paddock, none of them able to tell you what's growing in it.

Inflation jumps, the bourse dips, and the financial press acts like the petrol bowser is a weather event nobody saw coming. The RBA's been watching this one approach since the first tanker rerouted around the Strait, and the only people surprised are the ones paid to not be. Howard had two refineries. Rudd had two refineries. We've still got two refineries. The price of a tank of unleaded is the bill for thirty years of pretending geography was a suggestion.

Barton spent four and a half years watching the machinery work and now he's telling us the machinery's broken because someone's jammed a mate into the gears. The mandarins only discover the rules matter when the appointment goes to someone who didn't ring them first. Mandelson's the symptom — the disease is a system where every vacancy is a favour waiting to be returned.

The Spectator's discovered Anzac Day is sacred and the booing was a desecration — the same masthead that runs three culture-war columns a week treating every ceremony as a battleground, then acts shocked when someone treats a ceremony as a battleground. You can't spend a decade telling people the Welcome is a political stunt and then complain when they boo it like one.

The Spectator's discovered the monarchy has a function — turns out the function is showing up. Charles in Washington doing what a head of state does when the head of state actually heads. Harry and Meghan didn't miss the memo, mate. They read it, priced it, and licensed it to Netflix.