The Longest Time
Once, in the crowded streets of the entertainment district of Saigon, they had told him: "We haven't been alive for such a very long time. Thank you."
Bat shit crazy. Maybe.
But there were other forces at work, like it or not.
Now, in an appalled level of negation, they kept saying: We almost died.
As he looked out across another amazing sunrise, and the world lapped at his feet, and the ancients coalesced out of the humus of all the native spirits, the echo chambers of the hills.
They might be incapable of emotion, well, human emotion, but they were finding it hard to forgive. His dereliction of duty. His unique despair. His truly pathetic despondency. His negligent, dissolute conduct.
Well, that's how it felt some days.
As for the country, nobody had faith, or everyone had lost faith.
A fish rots from the head. And the head of this lousy filthy beast of a government, asleep at the wheel as it ground across the bodies of its own people, was rotten indeed. All the talented are excised from the public discourse. The news becomes a soup of propaganda. Sport metastasises across the airwaves. And people reach for the off button.
This is what a failed country looks like. This is how a betrayed population behaves. At first in quiet disbelief. At first the population maintains its old patterns and belief systems, work hard, live a good life. Be a good person. Take care of your children. And then, something else happens.
LEGACY MEDIA HEADLINES
SKY NEWS
Politics
Climate pests ‘shut down’ political media events to lecture struggling Australians on energy bills
A group of climate zealots have bragged about trying to “shut down” multiple press events to rant about climate change and lecture Australians facing a cost-of-living crisis about the price of power.
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
A former Australian defence force chief has warned “the vandals in the White House” are no longer reliable allies and urged the Australian government to reassess its strategic partnership with the United States.
Retired admiral Chris Barrie spent four decades in the Royal Australian Navy and was made a Commander of the Legion of Merit by the US government in 2002. He is now an honorary professor at the Australian National University.
“What is happening with the vandals in the White House is similar to what happened to Australia in 1942 with the fall of Singapore,” Barrie said. “I don’t consider America to be a reliable ally, as I used to."
ABC
Try as he might to insist it wasn't a demotion, Anthony Albanese handed what many considered to be a poisoned chalice when he made Plibersek minister for water and the environment. It was quite the combination for an inner-city, Left faction MP whose greatest political threat was always going to come from the Greens.
Fast-forward to today and Plibersek finds herself in a government that will next week rush legislation through the parliament that will see her sidelined.
The legislation will effectively override Plibersek's environmental review of the salmon farming to ensure the survival of the industry.
SBS
The office of Opposition leader Peter Dutton has admitted he "shouldn't have used" the phrase "limp-wrist", a term with historic anti-gay connotations, during a foreign policy event in Sydney on Thursday.
Asked at the Lowy Institute for his view on the Chinese naval task group which conducted live-fire drills off Australia’s coast in February, Dutton described the actions as a "show of force", before criticising Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s handling of the matter.
"It was the weakest, most limp-wrist response you could see from a leader, and frankly, none of his leaders, Liberal or Labor, would have provided the response that the prime minister did," Dutton told the audience.
NEWS
‘Hand over fist’: Wild way Donald Trump is about to impact Aussie economy
One of Donald Trump’s most shocking policies is about to hit Australia in a big way – and none of us will be immune from the aftermath.
THE NEW DAILY
‘$225 and dropping!’: Walz taunts Musk over Tesla
MACRO BUSINESS
The death of Australian industry is at hand
Friday 21 March 2025
As we know, Australian industry has been dying for decades. So much so that we leading the OCED into industrial oblivion.
SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA
Last week, I noted that tariffs can be a policy tool to protect domestic industry from foreign competition or a negotiating instrument to change the behaviour of foreign governments. A week after the article was written, President Trump imposed 25-per-cent tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium. I get that this is lamentable. But can it actually turn out to be an example of tough love that forces Australia into a reckoning of its self-damaging policy framework?
The outbreak of Trump Derangement Syndrome after the US tariffs were announced revealed a blinkered analysis of the real cause of why Australian products might be priced out of the US market. On 11 March the Australian reported that 49 per cent of the costs of building a new house, including the cost of land, are made up of taxes, regulatory costs, fees and infrastructure charges. Many of these costs, fees and charges by federal, state and local governments have doubled in the last five years. Yet almost all the focus by both Labor and the Coalition is on Band-Aid measures to help young people climb the first rung on the ladder of property ownership while ignoring the big-ticket governance reforms to reverse the policies that have turned Australia into a highly taxed and over-regulated country with crippling red tape, green tape, DEI tape and the like.
CRIKEY
‘We call that social murder’: Five years on from COVID supplement payments, more of us live in poverty
Five years ago Scott Morrison doubled JobSeeker payments, temporarily shielding millions from poverty. As costs rise and poverty rates worsen, why can’t the government do that again?