Last updated 8:01am Monday 27 April 2026 AEDT

Paul J. Berating

Australian Politics, Unfiltered. Sardonic Commentary Inspired By Australia's Greatest PM πŸ€¬πŸ‡¦πŸ‡Ί


Today's Top Stories

Ukraine won't give up at the behest of Donald Trump

Four years after Putin promised a fortnight's work, Ukraine is still standing β€” and now being told by Trump to call it a day.

Trump tells Ukraine to fold and Ukraine tells Trump where to put it β€” four years into a war Putin said would take a fortnight, the country still standing is the one being lectured about realism. Mate, the Ukrainians have learned more about sovereignty in four years than Washington's managed in fifty.

Merz promised the knife, delivered the butter spreader

Germany's conservatives wanted a break from Merkel's fifteen-year managerial drift. Merz spent a career attacking it, then inherited it whole.

Germans voted for a sharp conservative knife and got another butter spreader. Merz spent fifteen years telling anyone who'd listen that Merkel had hollowed out the CDU, then took the chancellorship and proved her right by becoming her. Bismarck unified Germany with blood and iron. This bloke's running it on focus groups and a shrug.

Wong takes the begging bowl to Asia

The Foreign Minister tours China, Japan and Korea to shore up fuel supplies as the Iran ceasefire holds and reserves remain below benchmark.

Wong's off to Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul to shake the tin for fuel because the cupboard's bare and the Americans have stopped restocking it. Three weeks ago we couldn't tell the public how many days of diesel we had. Now the Foreign Minister's doing the rounds with a begging bowl dressed up as a strategic dialogue. Talleyrand worked the European courts with leverage. We're working Asia with a shopping list.

Taylor backs NDIS overhaul β€” bipartisan agreement arrives once the bill's too big to fight over

Opposition leader Angus Taylor signals support for Labor's NDIS overhaul as SA Premier Peter Malinauskas commends the federal government's 'political courage' on reform.

Bipartisanship breaks out the moment the bill's too big to argue about. Taylor backing Butler on the NDIS overhaul β€” the political equivalent of two blokes finally agreeing to put out the fire after the house has burned down. Malinauskas calls it 'political courage.' Mate, courage is what you need before the cost blows out. After it, that's just arithmetic with a press conference attached.

Trump labels Correspondents' Dinner shooting 'unexpected'

President Trump addressed the press after a shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, calling the incident 'very unexpected.'

Trump calls a shooting at the press dinner 'very unexpected' β€” mate, the only thing unexpected in Washington these days is a sentence with a verb in the right place. Forty years of treating political violence as a ratings event and now the chickens have RSVP'd to the gala.

The know-it-alls pouring scorn on Labor have easy answers. They deserve more scepticism

The Albanese government will soon deliver the most highly anticipated budget in its four years in office. But economic experts probably aren’t going to like it.

Carney's defence of Labor amounts to: the experts who got the last decade wrong shouldn't be trusted on the next one. Fair enough. But 'the critics are also stupid' isn't a budget strategy β€” it's a press secretary's consolation. Chalmers will deliver something cautious, the gallery will call it bold, and the mortgage holders will keep doing the actual budgeting at the kitchen table.

Albanese breaks the piggy bank β€” on the people least able to break him back

Labor finally moves on the $50 billion NDIS, picking the cohort with the least political muscle to absorb the hit.

Albanese spent three years hoarding political capital like a bloke with a piggy bank he was too frightened to break, and now he's smashed it open for the NDIS β€” the one cut that punishes the people least equipped to punish him back. Courageous reform if you squint. A protection racket of a different colour if you don't.

The immortality bit at the tank show

Flint's reading prophecy into a hot-mic moment between Putin and Xi about living to 150 β€” autocrats talking nonsense at parades is the oldest show in the catalogue.

Putin and Xi muttering on a parade ground about living to 150 and the Spectator's treating it like Yalta. Two ageing autocrats doing the immortality bit at a tank show isn't a Bond villain plot β€” it's the standard delusion of men who've been told 'yes' for too long. Talleyrand would've been bored by lunch.

Leaders shocked the cenotaph they've branded for two decades got treated like a stage

Boos and heckles at dawn services drew condemnation from the political class β€” the same class that's spent twenty years using Anzac Day as a backdrop.

Heckling at a dawn service is a rotten bit of business, no argument. But spare us the leaders' synchronised tut-tutting β€” the same political class that turned Anzac Day into a photo op every April is suddenly shocked someone treated it like a public meeting. You can't spend twenty years draping the cenotaph in branding and then act surprised when the punters think it's a stage.

Afghan refugee in ADF gives dawn service speech the political class spent twenty years arguing against

The first Afghan refugee in the Australian Defence Force delivered the Anzac dawn service address, settling more about Australian identity in one speech than two decades of political debate managed.

An Afghan kid the system spent two decades arguing about now wears the uniform and gives the Anzac speech. The whole national debate about who gets to be Australian, settled at dawn by a bloke in service dress while the politicians were still working out their press releases. Worth more than every border slogan of the last twenty years combined.

The streaming platforms giveth, and at 3am they quietly taketh away

An Aussie's complaint about disappearing streaming content has landed on the central swindle of the subscription era β€” you're not buying anything, you're renting the memory of access.

Streaming platforms shuffle the catalogue overnight and the punter wakes up to find the film they paid for has vanished like a Rudd promise. We used to own the video. Now we rent the right to be reminded what we don't own. Blockbuster at least let you keep the late fee receipt.