Paul J. Berating

Today's Top Stories

⚡ Top Story

SMH · Shane Wright

Chalmers finds the edges of negative gearing, leaves the middle alone

Budget night tax tweaks promise 75,000 young Australians a home, while leaving the architecture that locked them out largely intact.

Seventy-five thousand young people into a home and two and a half million investors keeping the settings that priced them out in the first place. Hawke looked at negative gearing in '85 and lost his nerve inside eighteen months. Forty years later Chalmers has found the courage to tinker at the edges and call it reform. The market's already priced in the timidity.

Michael West Media · AAP

Soldier killed in parachute accident at Jervis Bay

One Australian soldier has died and another was injured in a parachuting incident during training at a Jervis Bay airfield.

A soldier's dead in a training jump at Jervis Bay and the appropriate response is silence, not commentary. The investigation will run, the family will grieve, and the rest of us can manage to keep our mouths shut for once.

SMH · Natassia Chrysanthos, Mike Foley, Shane Wright

One Nation says it's coming for more seats. These are the ones that could fall next

One Nation eyes Victorian border seats and beyond, betting the same grievances that gutted the Coalition in NSW are alive and well across the Murray.

One Nation's growth strategy is the Liberals' decay strategy with a different hat on. Hanson doesn't need to win seats — she just needs the Nationals to keep treating their own voters like furniture. Menzies built a broad church. The Coalition's left the side door open and the cats have moved in.

SMH · Staff reporter

The world discovers Pauline, thirty years late

Foreign media frame Hanson as Australia's Farage. She's been running the same act since 1996 — the world's only noticing now because populism finally has a global distribution deal.

The foreign press has discovered Pauline and decided she's our Farage, which is flattering to Farage. Hanson's been doing this routine since Howard was still pretending not to know her — the world's just caught up because populism's now a global franchise with branded merchandise. We exported the wool, the iron ore, and apparently the template.

SMH · Brittany Busch

Liberals swear off One Nation. Again.

Coalition figures rule out a formal One Nation deal after Hanson's first lower house win, even as preference flows tell a different story.

Three 'evers' from the Liberals, which is two more than they used when they preferenced One Nation in seventy seats last election. The party that swore off the dance partner keeps slipping back onto the floor when the lights go down. Menzies' broad church now needs a bouncer at the door and a witness at the bar.

Michael West Media · AAP

One Nation takes Farrer — the bush sends the Liberals a receipt

One Nation's historic Farrer by-election win signals the major parties are bleeding regional seats, with the Coalition copping the worst of it.

Farrer falls to One Nation and the Liberals discover the voters they've been taking for granted have been quietly shopping elsewhere. Menzies built a coalition that held the bush for fifty years. This mob lost it to Hanson at a by-election they didn't even bother turning up for properly.