The Rising Tide: The Diminished Circle
Let's make sense of this.
They had lumbered, those matrixes of millions, across the prehistoric Earth, the forerunners of our native spirits.
They became invisible to preserve themselves.
You think time is infinite and then it's not.
The decision is not up to me. The spirits will decide.
Australia was doomed. And yet all around him, in those quiet, unassuming suburbs, he could hear the sounds of children playing, parent's voices. Happy, mostly. Quiet, mostly, unassuming, mostly.
As for the broader political realm, it was a basket case. All the economic indicators were bad. A jaundiced public had no love of the incumbent, Anthony Albanese, parroted, in the most alarming way, the Deep State messaging that passed for the mainstream media, and thought little about the broader and deeper injustices foisted upon them.
They may have been sceptics, but they didn't have the time or the inner well of angst to worry it all to death. They just had to get on with their lives, taking care of business.
Albanese, Mr McGoo to you, was yet to call an election yet both sides were caught in a parrying of pre-election promises.
$150 off your electricity bill. After the last lie, electricity will be cheaper under Labor.
The so-called conservatives, the ones who had joined Labor in trying to censor the general public, were falling at the last post, unable to exploit the widespread disgust towards and active dislike of the incumbent. Gutless.
And so Australia marched, an endless charade of shallow promises everyone knew they would not keep. And the standard of living continued to plummet, the price of everything continue to rise.
SKY NEWS
Australia-US relations suffer latest blow as Trump administration cuts uni funding
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been urged to call an “emergency meeting” after the Trump administration cut grants to seven Australian universities.
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
Dutton’s momentum as opposition leader – in which he brute-forced his way into becoming the central character of federal politics, the most effective opposition leader since Tony Abbott – began rolling due to his stance on the voice referendum. Each day he pummelled Labor over its lack of detail, the failure to simply explain the constitutional change, overlooking the cost of the poll, not being focused on immediate challenges like cost of living, and being distracted by an issue most Australians were barely aware of.
But now here was Dutton providing little detail of the change he wanted, not trying to explain the constitutional change it would require, waving off questions of cost, and dismissively answering “you can walk and chew gum” when asked whether the cost of living wasn’t a greater priority.
It continued a trend: the Coalition seems weirdly unsettled at the moment.
ABC
Labor promises to shave $150 off energy bills in fresh election pledge
SBS
Voice of America: How Trump's cuts to US news outlets could be an opportunity for Australia
Experts say the virtual shutdown of US broadcasters overseas will leave space for China and Russia to expand their influence, while Australia would also be well placed to boost its soft power in Asia and the Pacific.
NEWS
China’s “leftover men” are getting desperate. So they’re turning to online catalogues to buy foreign brides.
It’s the inevitable outcome of decades of the Communist Party’s strictly enforced one-child policy.
Parents wanted to ensure they’d be financially secure in their old age. So they wanted sons.
The result?
By the early 2000s, there were 121 boys for every 100 girls.
THE NEW DAILY
Third mosque targeted in online Islamophobic threats
MACRO BUSINESS
$7 coffee plunges cafes into bankruptcy
Friday 21 March 2025
CreditorWatch warned that almost one out of every six (16.2%) hospitality firms is at risk of failing due to high interest rates, rising rents, cost-of-living pressures, and the pandemic hangover.
CreditorWatch forecast that roughly one in eleven (8.9%) food and beverage enterprises would close in 2025.
SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA
Fortune favours the brave, Mr Dutton
We need the Coalition to fight, fight, fight
Three years ago this week, as the 2022 federal election was about to be called, I asked the question in this esteemed publication whether the Liberals should be put out to pasture. The federal Liberals, under Messrs Turnbull and then Morrison, were on a fool’s errand for several years trying to out-Labor the Labor party in a pointless attempt to attract votes from the left.
As we know, Mr Morrison hammered the final nail in his government’s coffin when he jetted off to Glasgow in November 2021 stating that Australia would adopt net zero. How many seats on Sydney’s North Shore did that save for the Liberal party at the 2022 election? Answer: net zero.
At elections both state and federal over the last decade voters have been sending the Liberals a message. Ignore the base and the base ignores you. The Liberals had forgotten what it meant to be Liberals.
At the same time, I made the point that the then-opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, ‘fills no one with enthusiasm, but rather outright dread’, since he is of the hard-left of the Labor party and ‘no matter how hard he tries, that cannot be hidden forever’. Readers don’t need me to tell them that this government is in the ‘worse than Whitlam’ category. New data from the OECD shows that Australia’s decline in living standards is the worst in the developed world.
That brings me to the upcoming federal election.
CRIKEY
Australia’s universities and academics are under siege
Academic freedom is under threat from both the Trump administration and dogmatic efforts at self-censorship closer to home.
THE BIGGER STORY
MATT TAIBBI RACKET NEWS
Australia's Biggest Wanker
There's a dire warning for Donald Trump in the civil liberties blunders of New South Wales Premier Chris Minns
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns this week, defending Australia’s tough new hate speech law:
We don’t have the same freedom of speech laws that they have in the United States. And the reason for that is that we wanna hold together our multicultural community and have people live in peace free from the kind of vilification and hatred that we do see around the world.
This isn’t the first time that Minns derided our First Amendment as incompatible with “multiculturalism.” The Gavin Newsom-esque Labor pol with the sculpted hair-whoosh also said he doesn’t apologize for endorsing tougher laws than America’s, because he means to protect the “fragile multicultural community we’ve built here in Australia.” Unlike America, he added another time, Australia won’t allow a system that rests “on the worst actor, the baddest faith actor in our community, acting up and all of us turning a blind eye.” Why? Because “multiculturalism won’t survive like that”: