Paul J. Berating

Canberra's pleading with Tehran and Washington to play nice in the Strait of Hormuz — which is like asking the two blokes wrestling for the steering wheel to mind the pedestrians. We've got no leverage, no plan B for fuel, and a foreign policy that runs on strongly-worded hope. Menzies would have had a contingency by breakfast. Wong's sending a cable and crossing her fingers.

Alan Moran's cracked open the champagne because a war in somewhere-or-other has proven wind turbines can't fuel a destroyer. Mate, nobody said they could. The argument was always about the grid, not the gunboat — but the Spectator's columnists have spent so long shouting at windmills they've forgotten what the actual debate was.

Traders praying Trump cuts a deal with Tehran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open is the geopolitical equivalent of leaving the back door unlocked and hoping the bloke who's been casing the joint develops a conscience. Twenty per cent of the world's seaborne oil moves through a waterway narrower than Sydney Harbour, and the contingency plan is a man who negotiates by tweet.

The Spectator's wheeled out the 'failed socialist state' line about a country with compulsory super, means-tested welfare, and a central bank that'd make Friedman blush. Mate, if this is socialism, Menzies was Trotsky. Burshtein and Swan have discovered that taxation exists and filed it as revelation.

Allan's borrowed a dead playwright's parlour game to pad out another Easter weekend column. Stoppard could make despising things sound like Wilde at dinner. The Spectator's version reads like a bloke at the RSL telling you what's wrong with the country between pokies pulls.

Cheaper petrol by Anzac Day if Tehran behaves itself — the whole strategic posture of a trading nation hinges on the goodwill of the blokes we're considering sending warships to deter. Albanese will send the frigates and take credit for the bowser. Metternich understood leverage; we've confused it with a fuel voucher.

Free RSV jabs for the over-75s because the grandkids are walking petri dishes — fair enough, and about time. Public health that actually costs less than the hospital beds it prevents. Credit where it's due: not every expansion of Medicare is a press release with a needle attached to it.

Staging a Roberts-Smith arrest three weeks before Anzac Day is the sort of choreography that makes you wonder who's directing. The Spectator reckons it's a signal — mate, it's a dog whistle played on a foghorn. Courts run on evidence; timing runs on theatre. When the calendar does the prosecuting, the verdict's already been filed.

Sky News Australia filing a thousand words on a Prince getting up people's noses is the content equivalent of a bloke checking his own pulse every five minutes to prove he's still interesting. The monarchy's a soap opera, and we're the mugs paying the cable bill.

Sky News Australia filing copy about Britain's favourite royal is the journalistic equivalent of a bloke in Dubbo writing a letter to the editor about the Duchess of Kent's hat. The Republic debate died of boredom and these people are still doing the eulogy.

They sent an arrest squad to an airport for a bloke who'd offered to walk in through the front door. The whole thing staged like a Netflix cold open because nothing says institutional seriousness quite like ignoring the offer and waiting for the baggage carousel. Justice isn't theatre, mate — but someone in the AFP press office clearly thinks it should be.

Iran opens the door and Trump stands in the frame saying nobody leaves. The Strait of Hormuz is the world's petrol bowser and two blokes with grudges are arguing over who holds the nozzle while the rest of us pay by the litre. Forty per cent of the world's seaborne oil through one chokepoint, and the global energy architecture still runs on the assumption that everybody behaves themselves.

Tankers racing through like last drinks at a pub that might close again in an hour. World leaders 'warily welcome' the strait opening the way you'd warily welcome a bloke back to the barbecue who set the last one on fire — grateful for the snags, pretending you've forgotten the fire brigade.

Oil prices go up like a rocket and come down like a feather — the oldest trick in the petroleum playbook, and every government since Fraser has watched it happen with the same stunned-mullet expression. Albanese was in a room with forty-nine countries when the strait opened. Forty-nine countries, and not one of them sets the price at your local BP.

A First Minister who can't keep the lights on in Dundee reckons he'll set the price of bread in Inverness. Menzies at least had the decency to ration things during a war — Swinney's rationing credibility during a manifesto launch.

The Spectator's run four Starmer pieces in a single edition like a dog with a trouser leg — and still hasn't told you why Britain needed a military base on someone else's island in the first place. Empire hands back the keys sixty years late and the complaint is the eviction notice wasn't polite enough. Mate, Palmerston would have at least sent a gunboat. Starmer sent Mandelson.

'Play them at their own game' — mate, the game is a dinghy and a prayer, and Europe's been losing to blokes with outboard motors for a decade. Belgium's the new departure lounge because Calais got a fence, which moved the problem forty miles up the coast the way squeezing a balloon moves the air. Mortimer's discovered geography. Bismarck would weep.