Paul J. Berating

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Twitter account tracking London flat price drops pulls 14,000 followers in a month — that's not journalism, that's a generation watching the autopsy in real time. Thatcher sold the council houses and called it freedom. Forty years on the kids can't afford the flats their parents bought with a handshake and a milkround wage.

Taylor's reached into the bottom drawer for the Hanson songbook and called it a policy. 'Subversive intent' is the phrase doing all the work a direct slur can't manage in daylight. Farage writes the tune, Trump cuts the record, and the Liberals cover it in a Canberra accent like a pub band with no original material. Menzies built a broad church. Taylor's selling the pews for firewood.

The Spectator's rediscovered that empires in decline stop producing soldiers. Gibbon wrote six volumes on this in 1776. Wakefield's filed eight hundred words and called it a question. The fighting spirit went where the industrial base went, where the housing went, where the pension went — mate, you can't ask men to die for a country that won't let them rent in it.

Defence wants a submarine fleet but can't tell you where the glowing leftovers go. Cradle to grave costings, they call it — except they've skipped the grave bit because nobody's game to put a postcode on it. Three hundred and sixty-eight billion dollars and the waste plan has the detail of a note left for the milkman.

A by-election, a productivity speech, and Rebel Wilson in court — Crikey's run three stories past each other like a tram timetable and called it the news. The treasurer's 'signalling' tax policies again, which is what treasurers do when they want the headline without the hiding. Signal long enough and people stop looking at the road.

Chalmers is warning the budget depends on a war resolving itself, which is Treasurer-speak for 'I've got no idea and neither does anyone else.' Every federal budget since Curtin has been hostage to something — the pound, the dollar, the oil shock, China. The job description is running the country through conditions you don't control. Hedging the forecasts before the ink's dry isn't prudence, it's the paperwork of a man building his alibi early.

Test cricket's dying because the best cricketers would rather hit sixes for a franchise in Dubai than grind out a draw in Multan, and you can't blame them — the IPL pays in a fortnight what Lord's pays in a career. The ECB built the Hundred to save the long game and ended up feeding the beast that's eating it.

Starmer heading to the Gulf to secure the Strait of Hormuz has the energy of a bloke volunteering to bouncer a nightclub he couldn't get into last weekend. Britain lost the Suez in '56 and hasn't recovered the muscle memory — what exactly is the Royal Navy going to do, sternly sail past a Revolutionary Guard speedboat? Palmerston could send a frigate. Starmer sends a statement.

Hanson's vote dips a point and the press gallery declares the fever's broken. Mate, she's still polling at twenty-four — that's not a collapse, that's a breather. The majors haven't won anyone back; the protest vote's just resting between sets.