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editorial
editorial December 13, 2025
Pete Hegseth and the AUKUS folly
The man who sets Australia’s defence policy is an alcoholic former Fox News commentator who is known for his gross financial mismanagement and on at least one occasion paid a settlement to a woman he was accused of raping.
editorial December 6, 2025
Bruce Lehrmann is a liar. For years now, he has lied about the night he raped Brittany Higgins. He has made a small industry from this lie. He has sold it to television networks, in exchange for cocaine and sex. He has laundered it in the Murdoch press, where he has been invited to mock his victim and her husband.
editorial November 29, 2025
Barnaby Joyce’s political grey area
You can say this about Barnaby Joyce: it took him eating dinner in Pauline Hanson’s parliamentary office to realise how much he resembles a steak cooked on an open sandwich press. What the man lacks in integrity, he makes up for in shallow symbolism: the cow was reared by Gina Rinehart.
editorial November 22, 2025
On Linda Reynolds and Janet Albrechtsen
A little over a week ago, Linda Reynolds gave her first interview since winning her defamation case against Brittany Higgins. She gave it to Janet Albrechtsen, the right-wing columnist whose texts and phone calls infected the Sofronoff inquiry and to whom Reynolds had earlier leaked confidential details of Higgins’s Commonwealth settlement.
editorial November 15, 2025
Sussan Ley says she’s not worried about upsetting “people in Paris”. It’s a neat way of explaining how little she understands the Paris Agreement, a failure of comprehension so great she seems to believe it’s a treaty with France. The misapprehension captures the cow-eyed stupidity of the Liberal Party’s position on climate change and of the people who argued for it.
editorial November 8, 2025
The rise and rise of Pauline Hanson
Late last week, Pauline Hanson was a guest at Donald Trump’s Halloween party. She went as herself.
editorial November 1, 2025
Christopher Pyne was still a cabinet minister when he met with EY to discuss taking a job with the consultancy. There was no confusion about the purpose of the meeting.
editorial October 25, 2025
Ambition is dead, long live the king
Six years ago, while he was still opposition leader, Anthony Albanese addressed the Australian Republic Movement at a dinner in the King’s Hall of Old Parliament House. You can find the speech tucked away on his website, in the same way you can read Prince Andrew’s emails.
editorial October 18, 2025
Imagine that a young woman is raped in your office. You are a minister and she is the most junior member of your staff. In the footage you see later, she is too drunk to put on her shoes. She walks barefoot through the parliament with her colleague, who you also employ.
editorial October 11, 2025
Of all the things Scott Morrison does not understand, and the list is long and often embarrassing, somewhat in the shape of his prime ministership, China would rate very close to the top.
editorial September 27, 2025
This is what Sky News does. Occasionally, the network will apologise. Occasionally, there will be recognition that standards were breached, that there was an apparent failure of process. It doesn’t make it any less deliberate. It happens too often for it to be anything but.
