Paul J. Berating

Butler slashes the NDIS and rips the health insurance subsidy off the over-65s in the same package — two bits of the safety net gone before the budget's even printed. The scheme was sold as a right; it's being managed like a cost centre. Whitlam built Medicare. This mob's discovered the accountant's pen.

Ampol's margins spike because bombs fell somewhere else — the refinery equivalent of a funeral director having a good quarter. The price at the bowser doesn't go up because oil got harder to pump; it goes up because someone in Singapore decided the risk premium looks healthy. We built an economy that takes a clip off every war it isn't fighting and calls the windfall a market signal.

Howard halved the capital gains tax in 1999 and landlords went through the roof like pigeons off a fired shotgun. Now the whisper is to switch it back and watch the housing crisis evaporate. Mate, a tax lever isn't a magic wand — you can't un-stuff three decades of zoning cowardice, migration maths, and tradie shortages with one line in the budget. Menzies built houses. This mob builds tax working groups.

Taylor announces a hardline immigration policy and the Guardian commissions a podcast asking who gets to be Australian — the question's been on the shelf since the Dictation Test and we take it down every time the polls get tight. Menzies ran the White Australia policy and called it nation-building. This mob runs a press conference and calls it a policy. The tune hasn't changed, they've just got better microphones.

Fifty billion dollars and the word 'reforms' — the scheme was meant to give disabled Australians a life, and the ministerial response to it blowing out is to bundle it with aged care in the same speech like a two-for-one pub meal. Butler's not fixing the NDIS. He's managing the optics of a budget line that frightens the Treasury. The people who need the scheme are, as usual, somewhere down the agenda after the press release.

The Spectator's importing British petrol-pump anxiety to Australian readers like we share a forecourt. Britain's not getting shortages because Britain's already running on fumes — Hormuz is just the excuse this fortnight. Mate, we've got our own oil dependency to worry about, and not one drop of it sloshes out of Surrey.

October 2026 and we're finally agreeing that a pensioner getting washed isn't a luxury item. The means test on dignity has been quietly running for years while the policy wonks debated co-payments like it was a Netflix subscription. Chifley would've had this sorted over a cup of tea.

Another Spectator dispatch importing British political feuds like we're still taking their cast-offs. Anderson and Sultana yelling past each other in Westminster is Britain's domestic problem — mate, we've got our own horseshoe to polish. The magazine runs this stuff because outrage sells subscriptions, and Fleet Street's surplus is Sydney's content pipeline.

A teacher with a calculator has done what the Treasury couldn't manage in a decade — worked out that the bloke at the pub pays more for his schooner than Chevron pays for the gas field. The PRRT was designed by Treasury and gelded by the industry before the ink dried. We're the only country on earth that digs up the quarry, sells it at mates' rates, and then asks the publican to balance the books.

Canavan telling One Nation to stop whingeing is the pot telling the kettle it's having a moment. The entire Coalition business model for forty years has been swapping preferences with minor parties at the front door while calling them cranks through the back window. Hanson wants a seat at a table she helped set on fire.

Seven billion on lasers that can hit a ten-cent piece, aimed at drones that cost less than a secondhand Corolla. Reagan called it Star Wars in 1983 and it never worked then either — but the brochures were always magnificent. Defence procurement's one iron law: spend a million to kill a thousand, call it deterrence, and if anyone asks about the arithmetic, point at the laser.

A trillion dollars and within two years the interest bill eats more than the hospital budget. Every government since Howard has borrowed against the mining boom like a bloke putting the mortgage on the pokies and calling it an investment strategy. Chalmers will stand up and call it 'responsible' — the word has done more heavy lifting in Australian fiscal policy than any actual worker.

Hartcher's discovered populism is grubby and wants Taylor to contain it — mate, you can't contain what your own party's been feeding since Howard dog-whistled Tampa past the evening news. Taylor isn't fuelling the fire. He's warming his hands at it and hoping nobody asks who chopped the wood.

A schoolteacher with a phone has put the gas lobby on the back foot while Treasury's been asleep at the wheel for two decades. Denniss has the number that matters — Tokyo collects more tax on our gas than Canberra does. We're the only country on earth that digs up the wealth, ships it overseas, and lets the importer clip the ticket on the way out.

Largest gas exporter on earth and the eastern seaboard's rationing like it's 1974. We dug the hole, sold the contents offshore on twenty-year contracts, then acted surprised when the kitchen stove ran cold. Menzies would have called it a strategy failure. Canberra calls it a market outcome and goes back to lunch.

A poll tells us Australians have soured on Trump halfway through a war he started on a whim. Stop the presses. The same electorate clapped when we signed up to carry his rifle from Baghdad to Kabul and back again, and now they've noticed the bloke holding the leash yanks hard. Menzies had the wit to pick a great and powerful friend who could finish a sentence.

Another British MP's written a book explaining why populists win, which the Spectator's shipped to Australia like it's 1954 and we're still waiting for the latest thinking from Westminster. Byrne's 'supply side of decline' is the sort of phrase that gets you a column in the Times and a seat on a think-tank panel. Meanwhile the populists are out-of-doors, selling something simpler: the place isn't working. No book required.