Destroying Australia
In the future armour would clack out along his arms and legs and envelop his torso, the vulnerable flesh of man and machine, but for now all attacks were thwarted.
There was no use pretending he was amongst friends, although there were times when he most certainly wished he was. If you are not capable of great violence you are not capable of peace. You are simply helpless.
Prepare for combat.
He had always been in those puffy clouds of marijuana birthed in the billowing 70s, when to partake was a sign of a progressive and pleasant personality, an inquiring and artistic temperament. Now, you were just a loser. As he saw the ice addicts, pop eyed, always on scooters because they had lost their driving licences long ago, or could not afford a car. They stood out like Mordor characters on a dark set, but once, they had seemed like everything, the real people.
Now, Australia was heading into an election full of false promises and slanging matches between the tweedle dums and tweedle dees of Australian politics. All useless. All long ago having forgot who they served. Or whose pleasure they served at.
Democracy was a failure, everywhere. The Lib Lab Uni Party was a disaster. The sledging was tedious. The personalities equally tedious. His own personality intact
despite all the attacks, personally inflicted and otherwise, and it was time to go Walk About. That he knew.
The house had taken on its own personality. And was ready to welcome a stranger. While he was ready to travel.
Albanese. Dutton. The true tediousness of their sledging, and a truly tedious five week campaign.
Neither spoke the truth. Neither expressed the will of the people.
We stirred in the silent anger of disembodied wings and ancient sages.
We will be back. From where it all began.
A race against time, the Watchers on the Watch kept repeating. Perhaps they were right. Encased in flesh. Vulnerable flesh.
HEADLINES
SKY NEWS
Teen hairdressing apprentice ‘in shock’ after Teal candidate’s sexualised joke
A staff member at the Sydney salon where Teal candidate Nicolette Boele made a sexualised joke has told Sky News a teenage apprentice was “in shock” after hearing the lewd comments.
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
Malcolm Turnbull warns against ‘race of who can do the most sucking up’ to Trump
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has warned against Australia engaging in a race of “sucking up” to Donald Trump, as the US gets closer to imposing more broad-ranging tariffs across the globe.
Turnbull is at the National Press Club – and he jokes about wearing a blue suit and a red tie – discussing the changing security environment.
Trying to get into a race of who can do the most sucking up, particularly with Mr Trump, as I know from direct experience, is not the way to advance your interests or your nation’s interests. Our best assets for the United States in strategic terms is our geography. There’s an eerie resonance between the language Trump uses about Canada and the language Putin uses about Ukraine – borders are fictional, doesn’t deserve to be a separate country, and so forth. And then I need not remind you of the shameful way Trump has treated Ukraine.
ABC
The day kicked off with the release of a report in Washington DC by the US trade office detailing America's trade grievances with Australia.
It was a familiar list of complaints about Australian trade barriers, starting with US beef, pork, poultry, drugs, social media and local content streaming rules.
Trump is billing April 2 (Wednesday going into Thursday on our side of the planet) as "Liberation Day", with the US to unleash a series of "country by country" tariffs.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is having none of it, using his press conference in Perth to set the scene for what we all anticipate will be a rocky 48 hours.
None of the grievances listed by the top US trade official are up for negotiation, Albanese said.
"The idea that we would weaken biosecurity laws is really that, as my mum would say, cutting off your nose to spite your face," Albanese said.
"You undermine our biosecurity system. Not on my watch. On my watch, our biosecurity system is essential."
That would be the same country overrun with foreign pests, from rabbits to feral cats to cane toads.
SBS
Chalmers accuses Dutton of reading 'from DOGE playbook'; RBA leaves rates on hold — as it happened
Here's what happened on day four of the federal election campaign.\
NEWS
‘I’VE SETTLED’: Donald Trump decides on Aussie ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs
Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom fear that the ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump will be broad and wide-ranging.
THE NEW DAILY
‘Times have changed’: RBA leaves official rates untouched
MACRO BUSINESS
Retail sales going nowhere
SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA
Anthony Albanese went on a podcast earlier in the week where he was dared to use the word ‘delulu’ in a sentence.
‘Delulu’ being the new word for ‘delusional’.
Apparently, it was bred in the abyss of TikTok with the trending phrase, ‘delulu is the solulu’ meaning that self-delusion is the way to achieve your dreams, even if those dreams are, you guessed it, delusional.
CRIKEY
Yesterday there was finally some informed discussion in Canberra of the biggest issues confronting where Australia goes in a post-US empire world. It just didn’t involve any current politicians, who were far away talking about cost of living, how much they’d like to live in Kirribilli, and accusing rivals of stealing their policies.
Malcolm Turnbull’s Sovereignty and Security forum in Canberra gathered scores of security and defence éminences grises (with the emphasis definitely on the grise), and some not so eminent, such as disgraced home affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo, to discuss where Australia goes in an era in which Donald Trump has rendered the US security guarantee we’ve relied on for 80 years at best unreliable, and, plausibly, non-existent.
THE NIGHTLY
Malcolm Turnbull did not quite admit he planned to vote against the Liberal Party this election. Common courtesies must be respected, after all.
Asked Tuesday about his voting intentions, the former prime minister deferred to the sanctity of the “secret ballot”. It was as though it would be a breach of privacy to learn six years of criticism of his party had culminated in his vote going elsewhere.
Mr Turnbull lives in the Sydney seat of Wentworth, where a Liberal candidate not unlike a younger version of himself — articulate, commercial and connected — is trying to unseat the electoral juggernaut that is “teal” independent MP Allegra Spender. “The arrival of the teals is a very healthy development,” Mr Turnbull told the National Press Club Tuesday. “I can see how many campaign workers of mine are walking around with Allegra Spender hats on.”