July 26 – August 1, 2025
News
Comment
Comment
Ashlyn Horton
How the student debt cut still fails students
“Students are being crushed by rising costs, shrinking support and a welfare system that barely acknowledges their existence ... While the 20 per cent HECS-HELP cut might provide temporary relief, it does nothing to address the chronic underfunding and neglect that’s led us here.”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
New parliament kicks off
“Albanese’s victory is wide and shallow, based as it is on preferences and not primary votes. In effect, this puts the onus on the Albanese government to perform more strongly than in its first term … It will be judged on what it does to convince Australians it is prepared to take on reforms that will improve their lot.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Games
Climbing game Peak
The climbing game Peak – built almost entirely in a month during a developers’ retreat – has become a viral sensation in the midst of industry gloom.
Fiction
Be right back
“Banh mi crumbs fall onto my keyboard – a petri dish of despair, skin flakes and granules of instant coffee unlovingly dispelled from the side of my slack jaw. If Hansel and Gretel were to find the office worker on their lunchbreak, they’d only follow the stale breadcrumbs up the cinderblock lift and find me swathed in my sheets of data and formulas for timesaving and cost-cutting. In this reprieve – where my availability blinks yellow (be right back) like I’m stopped in traffic – I consider the big questions.”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
Race
“These senators aren’t required to be in the Senate for the Acknowledgment of Country. In fact, they haven’t been, in the past.”
The Indigenous affairs minister criticises One Nation senators who turned their back on the Acknowledgement of Country. They just feel more comfortable looking backwards.
Politics
“No one wants another early election.”
The Tasmanian Labor leader makes his pitch to form government with the cross bench after another early election left both major parties in minority. To extend the Groundhog Day metaphor, no one wanted more Winter either.
Animals
“Steers don’t fight. We castrate them so they don’t, right? Steers have their testicles removed … Bulls, moo. Bulls fight.”
The former Nationals leader responds to Dan Tehan’s comments that Joyce and Michael McCormack have been “like two steers fighting in the paddock”. Joyce thinks about bulls’ testicles nonstop and was happy it was for once relevant to the conversation.
Allegiances
“No, I swear allegiance to the Australian people.”
The independent MP refuses to pledge loyalty to King Charles at the opening of parliament. In the meantime, every three months, a person is torn to pieces by a crocodile in northern Queensland.
Footage
“I have checked my devices and I can’t find any material.”
The disgraced politician addresses reports he made a sex tape in the New South Wales parliament. It’s the sort of denial you give when you absolutely made a sex tape in the NSW parliament.
Defence
“It’s not extra. It’s a schedule that we have of a payment that we’re making.”
The prime minister confirms another $800 million has been quietly paid to the United States for submarines that will never arrive. Fittingly, the money has been taken from classrooms that will never be built.
