Paul J. Berating

Today's Top Stories

⚡ Top Story

AFR · Phillip Coorey

The Coalition vote finds its floor — and One Nation's already living there

The Coalition's primary vote has hit a record low while One Nation surges to near-Labor levels, even as Albanese's personal approval continues to slide.

The Coalition's primary vote isn't declining — it's achieving its natural level, the way water finds the lowest point in a paddock. When your policy offering is a vibe check and a scowl, voters don't defect to One Nation; they simply stop pretending the original product was different. Albanese is unpopular and still winning, which is less a compliment to Labor than an autopsy report on the alternative.

SMH · Courtney Kruk

Queensland's merged right quietly measures Canavan for a smaller coffin

Queensland senator James McGrath, a Liberal moderate, has beaten Nationals leader Matt Canavan for the LNP's No.1 Senate spot at the next federal election — a significant factional shift within the merged party.

The LNP putting a moderate above Canavan isn't a factional realignment — it's a survival calculation dressed as principle. Canavan's been auditioning for a party that doesn't exist yet, and Queensland's merged outfit has quietly decided the coal-fired culture war is a liability, not an asset. When your own side bumps you down the ticket, you haven't lost a preselection — you've been read your political last rites by people too polite to say it aloud.

SMH · Mike Foley

Three Weeks of Fuel and a Government Credit Card: Australia Goes Shopping

The federal government will subsidise private fuel companies to source emergency supplies globally, tacitly admitting decades of strategic petroleum reserve neglect.

Three weeks of reserves and the solution is a global scavenger hunt underwritten by the taxpayer. We spent decades privatising fuel security on the theory that the market would provide, and now we're providing the market with government money to do what a strategic reserve would have done for free. 'Ready for what may come' is a strange slogan for a country that's been told what's coming since 1973.

AFR · Ryan Cropp

Nation that refused to stock the pantry now panic-buying at surge prices

The federal government will use taxpayer funds to underwrite purchases of critical imported fuel as Middle East conflict threatens Australia's notoriously thin supply reserves.

Fifty years of strategic fuel policy and the big idea is the government going to Costco with your credit card. We wouldn't need to underwrite emergency shiploads if any government since Whitlam had built a reserve worth more than a long weekend's driving. This isn't energy security — it's a nation that refused to fill the pantry now paying surge pricing at the corner shop and calling it leadership.

Michael West Media · AAP

Trump's FBI probes elections the way arsonists investigate fires

The Trump administration's FBI investigation into the 2020 US election has been dismissed as detached from reality, with concerns mounting that similar probes will target the upcoming midterm congressional elections.

Trump's FBI isn't investigating an election — it's rehearsing for the next one. Every probe into 2020 is a dress rehearsal for delegitimising any result that doesn't suit, the way a bloke who accuses every partner of cheating is really telling you about his own intentions. The midterms loom and the machinery of inquiry is already warmed up. When the state investigates democracy itself, you're not protecting elections — you're replacing them.