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editorial
editorial January 31, 2026
According to police, the bomb was packed with screws and ball bearings. Weapons such as this are called fragmentation devices. They are designed to cause as much damage as possible, the shrapnel ricocheting out from the blast.
editorial January 24, 2026
The big lie the Liberal Party told itself was that moderates lost their seats at the past two elections because they were moderates. For the hard right, it was the perfect lie. Like much of what they imagine, it is the inverse of what is true.
editorial January 17, 2026
It is difficult to know which numbers are the more appalling, the very large ones or the ones that are tragically small. Is it the scale of the destruction of threatened species habitat approved by the Albanese government, or is it the fact that the surviving population of night parrots could be counted by most children under 10?
editorial January 10, 2026
Australia’s most significant military ally is now a rogue state. This fact should be more startling than it is. It should be cause for serious reconsideration of the country’s position.
editorial December 20, 2025
The dull crack of anti-Semitism
This is not like other hatreds. It is ancient and particular. It is sly. It has its own tropes and symbols. For centuries it has contorted into different justifications, but it has always been the same.
editorial December 13, 2025
Pete Hegseth and the AUKUS folly
The man who sets Australia’s defence policy is an alcoholic former Fox News commentator who is known for his gross financial mismanagement and on at least one occasion paid a settlement to a woman he was accused of raping.
editorial December 6, 2025
Bruce Lehrmann is a liar. For years now, he has lied about the night he raped Brittany Higgins. He has made a small industry from this lie. He has sold it to television networks, in exchange for cocaine and sex. He has laundered it in the Murdoch press, where he has been invited to mock his victim and her husband.
editorial November 29, 2025
Barnaby Joyce’s political grey area
You can say this about Barnaby Joyce: it took him eating dinner in Pauline Hanson’s parliamentary office to realise how much he resembles a steak cooked on an open sandwich press. What the man lacks in integrity, he makes up for in shallow symbolism: the cow was reared by Gina Rinehart.
editorial November 22, 2025
On Linda Reynolds and Janet Albrechtsen
A little over a week ago, Linda Reynolds gave her first interview since winning her defamation case against Brittany Higgins. She gave it to Janet Albrechtsen, the right-wing columnist whose texts and phone calls infected the Sofronoff inquiry and to whom Reynolds had earlier leaked confidential details of Higgins’s Commonwealth settlement.
editorial November 15, 2025
Sussan Ley says she’s not worried about upsetting “people in Paris”. It’s a neat way of explaining how little she understands the Paris Agreement, a failure of comprehension so great she seems to believe it’s a treaty with France. The misapprehension captures the cow-eyed stupidity of the Liberal Party’s position on climate change and of the people who argued for it.
editorial November 8, 2025
The rise and rise of Pauline Hanson
Late last week, Pauline Hanson was a guest at Donald Trump’s Halloween party. She went as herself.
