SMH · Matthew Knott
Polling shows Australians have cooled on Trump as the Iran conflict grinds on, with respondents split on joining a peacekeeping naval mission.
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.
Spectator Australia · Blake Neff
Labour MP Liam Byrne's new book diagnoses the 'supply side' of Western decline. The Spectator Australia has imported the analysis wholesale, as is tradition.
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.
Spectator Australia · John Power
Last month, a new account called London Price Drop appeared on X. It has already gained more than 14,000 followers…
The post Flat out: the property squeeze crushing the young appeared first on The Spectator Australia.
What to read next: Let teenage boys discover the English countryside | Gentleman’s Relish is no more | Welcome to the Taco presidency | Benefits treats: how Britain became a freeloader’s paradise
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.
SMH · Waleed Aly
Angus Taylor's 'subversive intent' framing borrows the Farage-Trump-Hanson playbook to target Muslim migrants without naming them.
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.
Spectator Australia · Mary Wakefield
The Spectator laments the collapse of British martial enthusiasm among young men — as if the answer isn't written across every boarded-up high street from Hartlepool to Hull.
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.
Crikey · Anton Nilsson
Crikey bundles a by-election, a productivity debate and a Rebel Wilson court date while Chalmers flags tax changes via the oldest trick in the Treasury playbook — the signal.
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.
Michael West Media · Rex Patrick
Defence is meant to deliver full lifecycle costings before procurement. On AUKUS nuclear waste, the numbers and the dump sites are both missing.
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.
SMH · Shane Wright
The Treasurer says next month's budget depends on how the Iran war plays out — a warning that doubles as pre-emptive cover for numbers that haven't landed yet.
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.
Spectator Australia · Lisa Haseldine
Keir Starmer eyes the Strait of Hormuz while the rest of his government collapses around him, trying to find abroad what he can't manage at home.
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.
SMH · Shane Wright
One Nation slips slightly in the polls while still sitting at twenty-four per cent, and the commentariat mistakes a pause for a retreat.
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.
Spectator Australia · Mike Jakeman
English cricket's structural problem isn't Duckett's average — it's that the money, the audiences and the talent have all moved to the short form, and administrators keep pretending otherwise.
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.
