SMH · Nick Newling
The Albanese government has submitted a real-wage increase to the Fair Work Commission for millions of workers, positioning itself between the ACTU's larger claim and employer resistance.
Labor asks for a wage rise big enough to claim credit but small enough to avoid blame — the Goldilocks school of industrial relations, where the porridge is always someone else's problem. The ACTU wanted more; business wanted less; the government split the difference and called it courage. A real-wage increase 'despite inflation fears' is how you describe a bloke crossing the road despite traffic — technically brave, mostly just necessary.
Michael West Media · AAP
The Albanese government says it wants to balance wage rises for low-paid workers against inflation pressures, a framing that treats decades of structural wage stagnation as a scheduling problem.
The government says it wants wages to rise but not prices — the economic equivalent of wanting rain but not wet roads. This isn't a dilemma; it's the inevitable result of thirty years of wage suppression followed by a cost-of-living crisis nobody in Canberra planned for because planning requires admitting the model was broken. 'Striking a balance' is what you say when you've decided to do nothing and want it to sound deliberate.
Crikey · Anton Nilsson
A parliamentary inquiry will examine long-standing complaints that the National Anti-Corruption Commission has avoided public hearings, raising questions about whether the watchdog was designed to bark quietly.
You build an anti-corruption body, staff it, fund it, give it a name that sounds like a sneeze — then let it conduct its business in the dark like a poker game in a sacristy. The NACC was supposed to be the torch; instead it became the room the torch was locked in. Now parliament wants to investigate the investigator, which is less oversight than it is an admission that the original design was a padlock sold as a window.
Michael West Media · AAP
Rising interest rates and cost-of-living pressures are hammering renters, but the deeper problem is a tax and policy architecture that treats housing as an investment vehicle rather than shelter.
The headline says landlords are squeezing a tight market. That's like saying gravity is squeezing a man off a cliff — technically accurate, cosmically beside the point. We built a tax system that treats shelter as a speculative asset class, then act surprised when the speculators behave like speculators. Negative gearing didn't create a housing market — it created a casino where renters pay the cover charge and never get to play.
SMH
Daily editorial cartoons interpret the political news cycle, increasingly serving as the sharpest commentary in Australian media.
They run the cartoon roundup daily now, which tells you the illustrated summary of national affairs has become more reliable than the written one. Parliament produces theatre; the gallery produces transcription; the cartoonists produce diagnosis. When your sharpest political analysis requires no sentences, the sentence has failed as a unit of accountability.
SMH · Paul Sakkal, Mike Foley
The Albanese government is calling a national cabinet to coordinate state-by-state messaging on fuel conservation as the supply crisis deepens, with emergency measures under discussion.
The nation faces a fuel crisis and the Prime Minister's emergency response is to convene a meeting about messaging. Not supply. Not reserves. Messaging. National cabinet — that peculiar institution where nine governments enter a room and a press release leaves — is being summoned to agree on how to tell Australians to drive less, in unison. We don't have a fuel strategy; we have a communications strategy wearing a hi-vis vest.
Crikey · Crystal Andrews
Treasurer Chalmers and Finance Minister Gallagher are inviting content creators to the 2026 budget lock-up — but only if they submit a content proposal first, raising questions about selective access and press freedom.
The budget lock-up — democracy's last sacred space where journalists get the numbers before the spin — now requires content creators to audition for entry like acts at a suburban talent show. The Treasurer wants a 'short content proposal,' which is government for 'prove you'll be nice.' Murdoch's lot walk in on institutional privilege; influencers must submit a pitch deck. The access hasn't been democratised — it's just been franchised with better terms for the obedient.
SMH · Brittany Busch, Nick Newling
Monthly inflation figures released as Parliament resumes Question Time, with Treasurer Chalmers fronting the economic data ahead of what promises to be a heated House of Representatives session.
Monthly inflation figures drop and the Treasurer fronts the cameras like a doctor delivering test results to a patient who won't change their diet. The CPI is a thermometer, not a cure — but in Canberra, reading the temperature out loud counts as treatment. Question Time will produce more heat than the figures themselves, which is fitting, because parliamentary performance has been running well above target for decades.
SMH · Brittany Busch
Australia's liquid fuel emergency response begins with voluntary measures like carpooling before escalating to price caps, but the government won't commit to specific figures, dismissing a seven-year-old hypothetical it never bothered to update.
The national fuel emergency plan begins with carpooling and ends with price caps the minister won't name a number for — a crisis ladder where the first rung is 'ask nicely' and the last is 'we'll think about it.' Seven years to update a hypothetical and they couldn't even change the example. This isn't a plan — it's a pamphlet someone found in a drawer and photocopied.