Paul J. Berating

Wellington's running a sale on Australian capital and Canberra's response is to keep stacking the price tags. Every serious tax reform in this country gets the same treatment — the productive end gets the bill, the rentier end gets a wink, and the ambitious end gets a one-way ticket to Auckland.

Musk floats SpaceX and the man becomes a trillionaire on paper before the rocket clears the tower. A bloke who can't run Twitter without it catching fire is about to be handed the GDP of a mid-sized nation, and the financial press will call it visionary because the alternative is admitting they've spent a decade taking dictation.

Albanese in Alice Springs to grieve and then to swing — the Country Liberals get the punch, the Commonwealth gets the photo op. A child's death has become the latest stretch of turf between Canberra and Darwin. Federation's a relay race where everyone drops the baton at the same spot and points at the next runner.

A royal commission is what you call when you've run out of ways to look like you're doing something. Albanese's response to femicide is the same response Canberra has to everything that can't be fixed by a press release — set up the inquiry, brief out the empathy, then act surprised when the women who've been asking for years find the tone a bit thin. Grace Tame copped 'difficult'. Turns out being difficult is the only way anyone in this town listens.

Hollingworth fought poverty for half a century and resigned over abuse he handled like a man filing it. The job he should never have had — governor-general — was Howard's gift to a church that needed the distraction. Two institutions failed the kids in his care. The state honoured him anyway. That's the obituary nobody writes.