Are there Entities in Space?
Squandering the future. If only we believed them. We are waiting on confirmation. Again, only some of it made sense.
Enough, already. He had booked his tickets. We want out. The glooming spirits in their cold forests, the glories eddies of the airborne currents, the cold of the waves as they splashed upon the shore. The end of Daylight Saving was almost upon them, again.
Strange to say, the Old Girl had been right about many things, in this stark small house on the shallow hillside. Where she had been so lonely. And ultimately so sad.
He couldn't help thinking about her sometimes. Regret, of course. We all have regrets. But anyway, life rolled on regardless. Those giants who lumbered through the air unseen. Those spirits that coalesced out of thin air, seemingly unheralded, drummed out of nothing in those cold spaces where the air breathed and a strange sense of sorrow permeated the times as young families played and struggled and the workers of the area patched their lives together.
He heralded the Doom, but at the same time, at least on some days, it was as if the Gods were laughing. But mostly, of course, just indifference. Was there truly a lifeform out there who counted its own passing in millions of years, that strange eternally slow flap of wings in the mountains and seas above them, an imprint into eternity.
Australia was a land of the gaslit, the people lied to so frequently and so audaciously that nobody believed a word the government said, and shrugged with indifference. Time was passing and he struggled to survive.
In a sense it was glorious, the kings on their horses clad for battle, medieval ramparts, at others it was essentially incomprehensible. Tiny minds lost in a fragment of history.
Australia? Well Australia was coming undone.
THE BIGGER STORY
SKY NEWS
‘Where the hell is that all gone’: Bolt slams Labor for racking up massive debt
Andrew Bolt has slammed the Albanese government for handing down a budget with years of massive deficits and debt figures that will soon surpass $1 trillion, stating that voters would rightly be asking “where the hell is that all gone?”
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
Australia’s labour market has consistently defied expectations, with most jobseekers still able to find work even as inflationary pressures hit their employers.
Those workers have delivered the government another higher-than-expected tax take, which will help Labor fund its pre-election policies, including income tax cuts, while allowing the government to argue that its forecast budget deficits are reasonable.
ABC
Australians earning the national average income will get a tax cut of more than $1,600 from 2026 onwards, according to the latest federal budget.
The new round of "modest" tax cuts form part of a slew of cost-of-living measures announced by the Treasury.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said "families of middle Australia" would receive the most, with an average household receiving a combined benefit of "more than $15,000" over the next four years.
SBS
Treasurer warns of 'storm clouds' as he unveils budget with tax cuts and $42bn deficit
All Australian taxpayers will receive an extra tax cut of up to $268 next year — as well as the year after — if Labor is re-elected in May, in a move that the Coalition says it will not match if it wins government.
Handing down the 2025-26 budget on Tuesday, Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced there would be a $42 billion budget deficit next financial year.
Citing global trade disruptions, the economic cost of major weather events in Queensland, and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, he said "storm clouds" were gathering in the global economy.
"Australia is neither uniquely impacted nor immune from these pressures," he said.
"This budget is our plan for a new generation of prosperity in a new world of uncertainty."
NEWS
Sarah Ferguson’s interview with Angus Taylor was noticeably testier than with Jim Chalmers.
In one exchange, Mr Taylor would not commit to a timeframe to get the budget back to surplus, saying only that re-establishing “fiscal guardrails thrown out by Labor” would get the budget back to balance “over time”.
“What we see in this budget [is] $170 billion of deficits, an extra $400 billion of spending and taxing since Labor came to power and no pathway back to prosperity,” he said.
“So no timeframe on that,” Ferguson said.
THE NEW DAILY
Taxpayers promised more relief in budget
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the Australian economy was "turning a corner" after previous years of high inflation
‘Truly the worst’: Donald Trump demands portrait removal
MACRO BUSINESS
Labor handed down the ultimate pre-election pork-barreling budget, promising workers two more rounds of tax cuts and increasing expenditure in what will be the largest budget deficit since the pandemic.
Major announcements included: a $17.1 billion package of income tax cuts (over five years); an $8.4 billion boost to Medicare; a $1.8 billion extension of the existing energy rebate scheme; a 20% cut to student debts; and several billion dollars in grants for state rail and highway projects.
Labor has flung electoral bribes at voters with the sole aim of wedging the Coalition and securing another three years in office.
SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA
Regional Australians are the biggest budget losers
CRIKEY
Forget the economy, there’s an election to win
Labor has one thing, and one thing only, in mind with this big-spending, tax-cutting budget: secure another three years in office.
The big bribe budget: Labor throws billions of dollars at your kitchen table
If you’re going to bribe the electorate, go hard. Labor has done exactly that with a budget aimed at making life easier for households. Between tax cuts, Medicare spending and pay rises, this is a budget that won’t die wondering.