⚡ Top Story
Guardian Australia · Josh Butler
Singapore's PM has pledged not to cut fuel supplies to Australia amid the Middle East energy crisis, with a new agreement to maintain flows of refined petrol and LNG between the two countries.
We ship them the gas, they refine it, ship it back, and we're celebrating that they've promised to keep doing so. Somewhere between Gladstone and Jurong Island, Australia became the only energy superpower in history that needs a pinky swear from its middleman to keep the lights on.
Spectator Australia · Leila Naseri
Spectator Australia runs an explainer on Iran's foundations alongside a sidebar of pieces advocating military escalation, creating an editorial corridor from cultural appreciation to regime change.
The Spectator's discovered Iran has foundations. Next week: countries have histories. The related reading list — 'it's about sulphur,' 'the death of decarbonisation,' a ground invasion — reads like a hawkish advent calendar where every door opens onto the same tank.
SMH
Prime Minister travels to Singapore's Jurong Island refinery hub to secure fuel supply agreements, as Australia's lack of domestic refining capacity continues to leave the country dependent on imports.
The prime minister of an energy superpower flew to someone else's refinery to ask nicely about petrol. We dig it up, ship it out, then send the PM to Jurong Island cap in hand to buy back the finished product. A wheat farmer queuing at the bakery and calling it trade strategy.
news.com.au
Friends of a man allegedly murdered by his mother told a court he was kept isolated and barred from seeing them, with his mother reportedly saying she did not want a 'vegetable' in her home.
Every inquiry into a death like this finds the same thing — isolation visible to friends, invisible to every institution paid to notice. We have disability services, carer support frameworks, mandatory reporting obligations, and somehow a man's mates could see what the system couldn't. The architecture of care is magnificent on paper. On the ground it's a pamphlet nobody reads and a hotline nobody answers.
news.com.au
Former PM Tony Abbott has urged Anthony Albanese to contact Donald Trump and offer Australian support in the conflict with Iran.
Abbott's never met a foreign conflict he didn't want to volunteer someone else's kids for. The bloke who couldn't keep his own cabinet together reckons he should be advising on Iran — like a man who burned down the kitchen offering to cater your wedding.
SMH · Mike Foley, Brittany Busch
Energy Minister Chris Bowen says fuel imports remain stable and rationing is not being contemplated, responding to concerns about Australia's fuel supply resilience.
'A long way from fuel rationing' is the kind of reassurance you only need to offer when someone's already smelled smoke. Bowen's answering a question nobody asked six months ago, which tells you more than the answer does.
news.com.au
Australia is copping extreme weather from every direction simultaneously — cyclonic winds, heatwave conditions and snow, all in the same week across different states.
Four seasons in a weekend and the Bureau still has to beg for funding like a busker outside Treasury. We built a continent-sized country on the assumption the climate would sit still, and now it's moving in every direction at once while the national conversation is about gas prices.
ABC News · Tom Lowrey
Australia's chief of defence says the ADF could deploy a warship to the Strait of Hormuz if the government requested it, amid rising tensions over Iran and US pressure on allies to contribute to regional security operations.
The defence chief says we could absolutely send a warship to the Hormuz if asked, which has the same energy as a bloke at the pub announcing he could absolutely fight the bouncer if provoked. Nobody doubted the ship floats, mate. The question is who decides where it sails, and the answer — as always — is whoever rings from Washington.
SMH · Clay Lucas
Former SAS captain and Coalition MP Andrew Hastie may testify in the Ben Roberts-Smith murder trial, calling the arrest a 'sobering day' while cautioning against prejudicing proceedings.
Hastie calls it a 'sobering day' — mate, the Brereton report landed in 2020. Six years to get from 'credible information' to criminal charges while the regiment closed ranks, the decorated walked free, and the political class discovered its concern for due process at exactly the pace required to avoid doing anything uncomfortable. The sobriety was always available. Nobody ordered it.
Michael West Media · AAP
The High Court has refused Bruce Lehrmann's application for special leave to appeal Justice Lee's finding that Network Ten's report of his rape of Brittany Higgins was substantially true, exhausting his final legal avenue.
Lehrmann took his defamation case through every court in the country like a bloke appealing a parking fine all the way to The Hague. Three judges said no, and he kept knocking. The High Court's refusal isn't news — it's a full stop that should have been a full stop two courts ago. The only institution that came out of this worse than he did is the one that employed him.
