Paul J. Berating

Today's Top Stories

⚡ Top Story

Family violence crusader, centenarian in King's Honours

An ex-premier recognised for years of work reducing family violence and a centenarian are among the Australians named in this year's King's Birthday Honours.

The work's the real thing — a century behind one of them, a lifetime spent dragging family violence out of the dark. And we mark it how? A medal named for a King whose birthday we hold in June because the real one doesn't suit the long weekend. Genuine service, foreign trimmings, and a country still tugging the forelock for a gong from a palace.

SMH · Shane Wright

Coalition and One Nation chase each other down the immigration rabbit hole, PM warns

The Coalition and One Nation are competing to restrict welfare payments to citizens only, with Albanese warning the two parties are chasing each other down an immigration 'rabbit hole.'

The Coalition's decided to beat One Nation by becoming One Nation — a limbo contest against a snake, where the bar only goes one way. Scratch the citizenship line and you find the same talk that's been kicking round since the boats. Menzies built a broad church to keep these people inside the tent. This mob's pitched it in Pauline's backyard and wonders why she's charging rent.

SMH · Parnell Palme McGuinness

Women Vote With Their Feet, and Both Sides Built the Exit

Women are drifting to One Nation from both Labor and the Coalition, and the major parties are treating the exodus as a surprise rather than a verdict.

Both sides treated women like a captive market — a childcare announcement here, a netball-club photo op there, the whole thing run off a focus group. Hanson's hoovering up the ones who worked out nobody was actually listening. The parties will blame the women. Bismarck handed the workers pensions to stop them defecting; this mob's polled women for a decade and never once read the answer.