Paul J. Berating

Hockey wants Albanese to cold-call Trump like he's flogging solar panels in Penrith. The man who couldn't sell a budget to his own party room is now selling phone diplomacy. Talleyrand built alliances through cunning. We're building ours through the redial button.

Cash wants to know why the AFP moved fast on Roberts-Smith and slow on the returning brides — as if the answer isn't that one case had a Federal Court judgment sitting on the desk and the other didn't. The Coalition's discovered prosecutorial timelines are a wonderful thing when you've got nothing else to say at the dispatch box.

Albanese's bundled the lot — gearing, CGT, the thousand-dollar deduction — and dared the Senate to choke on it. Hawke flinched in '85 and spent forty years explaining why. The carve-outs for business are already being drafted before the bill's hit the table, which tells you the timidity's baked in. Reform by ambush works once. The morning after is where governments live or die.

Tankers turn around in the Strait of Hormuz and the ASX claps like a seal at feeding time. The market doesn't price peace — it prices the rumour of peace, then prices the rumour of the rumour. By Thursday Trump will have unnegotiated it on his phone and the same traders will call it a shock.

The teals are forming a party, which is the political equivalent of a book club deciding to incorporate. The whole point of the independent brand was that you weren't a party — now they want a logo, a constitution, and presumably a national conference where they argue about the catering. Pocock's let the cat out of the bag and the cat's wearing a lanyard.